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ANNALS OF C^SAR 

A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY 

WITH A SURVEY OF THE SOURCES 



FOR MORE ADVANCED STUDENTS OF ANCIENT HISTORY 

AND PARTICULARLY FOR THE USE AND SERVICE 

OF INSTRUCTORS IN CiESAR 



BY 



E. G. SIHLER, Ph.D. 

(Johns Hopkins, 1878) 

PROFESSOR OF THE LATIN LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE 

IN NEW YORK UNIVERSITY, SOMETIME FELLOW IN 

GREEK IN THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY 



incorrnptam fidem professis neque 
amove quisquam et sine odio dicen- 
dus est Tacitus 



NEW YORK 
G. E. STECHERT & CO, 

London, Leipzig^ and Paris 

1911 






COPTEIGHT, 1910, 

By E. G. SIHLEE. 
Set up and electrotyped. Published December, 1910. 



J. S. Gushing Co. — Berwick & Smltli Co. 
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



CC!.A278293 



Co 
BERNADOTTE PERRIN 

OF TALE TJNIVEKSITY 

A DISTINGUISHED STUDENT OF CLASSICAL 
HISTORIOGRAPHY 



PREFACE 

The origin or source of this book as a book was in the 
lecture-room of my graduate students. These earnestly 
urged that my lectures on the " Life and Letters of Julius 
Caesar " be published, in order that they might have and 
use them for their better equipment as instructors. To 
this I finally consented. The first two chapters have 
been entirely recast and rewritten, but the rest of the 
work, apart from mere verbal changes, is here presented 
substantially in the form and sequence of the lectures. 
The added phrase in the subtitle, "a critical hiography^^'' 
is neither unmeaning nor boastful. In a certain Avay 
these lectures were reared upon or constructed out of 
the ancient sources as their only material, being elaborated 
with an exclusive regard for the same, discarding the 
popular mode of an artificial modernization of figures and 
atmosphere. 

It thus became necessary to write an important seg- 
ment of ancient history — the confluence of all its tributa- 
ries into the bed of one broad and deep stream — to write, 
I say, with faithful observation of that care and caution 
which constitutes the essence of classic philology. The 
relative weight, dependence or coloring, animus or thral- 
dom, of all these writers, Cicero, Sallust, Livy, Velleius, 
Nicolaus of Damascus, Lucan, Plutarch, Suetonius, Appian, 
Cassius Dio, as well as of Caesar himself, together with 
Hirtius and the military relations of the supplementary 
accounts, had been studied and sifted by themselves. 
But the resultant observations and clews have been put 
into smaller print. Thus these annals themselves, in their 



vi PREFACE 

larger movement, are easily distinguished from the ancient 
tradition itself with its nebulosities or luminosities,^ the 
problems of direct and indirect relation, the evidences 
of copying, of confusion, of partisanship, the personal 
elements, and other pertinent outcome of close vision and 
rigorous examination. Thus, then, I entertain some 
hopes that directors and students in classical and histori- 
cal seminars may find the book useful. 

Coming now to the larger aspects of these lectures, 
I hope to interest a wider public also. I have never 
allowed myself to assume any fixed emotional attitude 
towards the central figure of these studies. I have kept 
my mind free from any preconceived or predetermined 
conception of Caesar and the larger figures of his genera- 
tion. Better to let acts and action, utterance and judg- 
ments of the actors, — better to permit events, results, and 
issues by their own sequence, and by an intrinsic force 
of their own, comparable to a kind of induction, to do 
their own work and gradually draw their own lineaments, 
and beget in the reader a certain definite and substantial 
body of political, moral, psychological insight and infor- 
mation, where the relating historian himself keeps in the 
background as much as the rhapsode who chanted an epic 
created before. 

A valuation of Mommsen and of Froude, from whom 
the author differs toto coelo^ has been placed in an appendix. 

Two things, I believe, constitute the substance of his- 
toriography. Of these, one is more necessary than the 
other, but often difficult and generally unwelcome to 
many readers ; viz. the exact determination of what hap- 
pened, what we know and do not know. Here too belongs 
the approach, often necessary, to the gray atmosphere 
of conjecture and mere probability or possibility. The 
other one of these two things is valuation, estimation, 

1 These largely furnished by Cicero's letters. 



PREFACE Vii 

and characterization. It is this latter element which the 
general public chiefly if not exclusively regards, which 
it quotes and praises, in which it delights, by which often 
it is enthralled ; the most personal side in the historian's 
self-revelation. But I am much impressed with a norma- 
tive aphorism of Rankes : " Naked truth without any 
adornment. Thorough investigation of detail: leave the 
rest to God. By all means let us have no inventing, not 
even in the smallest matters, by all means let us have 
no mere figment of the brain" ("nur kein Hirngespinnst"). 
" The historian's quest in history must not be for beauty 
only and striking lineaments, but exact truth." 



No lengthy bibliographical list, no heavy drafts upon 
Bursian's " Jahresbericht," are here to be appended. The 
collections of Peter, the introductions to the authors of 
classic historiography by Sehaefer and Wachsmuth, are 
familiar. Ever must the earnest student return to that 
splendid repertory, Fischer's " Zeittafeln," Altona, 1846. 
I said repertory/ : after all, that is the irreducible minimum 
of value even in the most eminent antiquarian books, 
such as Mommsen's ultra-systematic treatises on the 
Roman government. Mommsen, Kiepert, Droysen, Lud- 
wig Lange, — I heard and saw them all in my vernal 
time, when one admires but does not judge as yet. 

Repertories : hence Madvig's deliberate self-limitation 
to the definite state of actual tradition impresses me as 
admirable. 

Of recent books the heavy volume of T. Mice Holmes of 
London (" Caesar's Conquest of Gaul," 1899) and Bots- 
ford's " Roman Assemblies " (1910) are very noteworthy 
productions, and the latter is not unworthy of a place 
near Ludwig Lange. 

My work could hardly have been accomplished at all 
without Terrell's monumental arrangement of Cicero's 



viii PREFx^CE 

letters. — Many references to books and treatises will 
be found in the notes or index. — As for the author of 
the present volume, a large part of his professional life 
has been devoted to first-hand study of classical history 
and civilization, as in the Essays of his " Testimonium 
Animse," 1908: in ch. 14, "Roman Spirit and Roman 
Character"; ch. 15, "Ritual and Worship among Roman 
Institutions"; ch. 16, " Cicero of Arpinum, Cato of Utica." 

But even more specifically (in the wider range of this 
entire domain) I may be permitted to refer to some of 
my former things, such as " Character and Career of 
Tiberius" (1880), "The Tradition of Cesar's Gallic 
Wars from Cicero to Orosius " (1887), " Studies in Csesar " 
(1890), "A Concordance of Caesar's Seven Books" (out 
of print, 1891), " Census Lists in Livy " (1891), " A Study 
of Velleius" (1894), "St. Paul and the Roman Law" 
(1894), the Introduction to my edition of " Cicero's Sec- 
ond Philippic " (1901, now published by D. C. Heath & 
Co.), and "Augustus Princeps " (1902). 

In conclusion may I not express a hope (not oversan- 
guine, it is true) that our British and Continental fellow- 
classicists may begin at least to realize that first-hand 
classical study on this side of the Atlantic has reached 
a point of earnestness, a stage of exact and sustained 
effort which may deserve some attention from them, too, 
and some return for the European pupilage which among 
us is rapidly coming to an end. 

E. G. SIHLER. 

New York University, University Heights, 
October 28, 1910. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Ancestry, Childhood, Early Youth ... 2 
II. Political Retrospect : from the Gracchi to 
Sulla. The First Great Test of Young 

C^SAR 8 

III. Young Cj^sar in the Field and on the Forum . 34 

IV. Cesar's Public Advancement before 63 B.C. . 44 
V. 63 B.C. — A Critical Year 67 

VI. C^SAR AS Prj^tor and IN HIS FiRST Imperium . 72 

VII. The Triumvirate and C^:sar's Consulate . . 79 

VIII. C^SAR IN 58 B.c 91 

IX. Cesar in 57 b.c 101 

X. C^SAR IN 56 B.c 109 

XL C^SAR IN 55 B.C. 119 

XII. C^SAR IN 54 B.c 127 

XIII. C^>SAR IN 53 B.c 139 

XIV. Vercingetorix the Arvernian, 52 b.c. . . 152 
XV. C^SAR in 51 B.C 169 

XVI. C^SAR IN 50 B.C 185 

XVII. C^SAR IN 49 B.C. 190 

XVIII. C^SAR IN 48 B.c 205 

XIX. C^sAR IN 47 B.c 214 

XX. Cjssar in 46 B.c 226 

XXI. The Last Year but One, 45 b.c 239 

XXII. The Last Months of Cesar's Life . . . 251 

XXIIL The Writings of C^sar 263 

XXIV. The Supplementary Accounts . . . .279 

XXV. The Other Sources 289 

Appendix: Mommsen and Froude 309 

Index 321 

ix 



ANNALS OF C^SAR 

" Wie es denn eigentlich gewesen ist.'" — Ranke. 

" Srt ToTs TrpdyfxacrLP ij8r] ixovapxi-o-s eSei dia ttjv KaKOiroXtTeiav''^ (that the 
situation of affairs now required the rule of a single person on account of 
the vicious character of the actual government). — The philosopher Kra- 
tippos to Pompey, after Fharsalos, 48 b.c. Plut. Pomp. 75. 

I DESIRE to begin this book with the utterance of a 
caution and the presentation of an image. 

First, the caution, intended both for myself and for my 
readers : — Biography in a way is a justification of the 
action portrayed ; everything seems much more plausible 
than in historiography at large. As we gain a closer vis- 
ion of causes, motives, temperaments, situations, sequences, 
almost all our valuations seem to be truer and fairer. But 
with all this there is a positive danger of our drifting into 
a certain emotional prejudice or partisanship. This is so 
because there is apt to be engendered in us an ever 
strengthening inclination to identify ourselves, for the 
time being, with the subject and to assume his concerns 
as our own. And then the image : A politician, however 
extraordinary and epochal he may be, at one time rides 
the billows and dominates public life, as Neptune ruled 
the flood, uttering a quasi-sovereign '' quos ego ! " to hostile 
forces cowering before him and turning to flight. At 
another time he resembles an anxious pilot, furling sails 
and straining his eyes as they sweep a prospect of foam- 
crested and storm-whipped gray seas : and again that 
mighty politician resembles a mariner suddenly engulfed 
and no more seen, swallowed up by the very element 
which bore him on its back, and which he even seemed 
to dominate before. 



CHAPTER I 

ANCESTRY, CHILDHOOD, EARLY YOUTH 

The biography by Suetonius is now truncated at the 
beginning. If this initial portion were not lost Ave would 
have a complete survey of the Julian family, its pedigree, 
its political and military honors, its curule and other 
offices, and the like. Alban, nay Trojan, ancestry was 
the pride of that house. The lulii were transferred to 
Rome from the venerable acropolis of the Latin name by 
the third king of Rome, as were the Servilii, Creganii^ 
Metilii, Curiatii, Quinctilii, and Cloelii. Varro, the great- 
est antiquarian of Rome, and the greatest authority in the 
generation of Csesar and Cicero, wrote a monograph deal- 
ing with the " Trojan Families " of Rome. 

Julius is a derivative of lullus ^ or lulus. Of course the 
legends of -^neas and his son Ascanius-Iulus flourished 
long before Vergil wrote his epic, in which the Venus 
G-enetrix of the Julian legends rules and shelters the first 
fates of the imperial commonwealth, as in "^neid," 1, 288. 

In the first generations of the Republic the family occu- 
pied a prominent rank. In 489, when Coriolanus was in 
exile. Gains lulius lulus was consul (Dionys., "Antiqq. 
Rom.," 8, 1). Again we meet the name of lulius lulus in 
the consular Fasti of 482, 473, 447, 435. But later on, in 
the consolidation of the Latin communities and the slow 
conquest of the peninsula, they seem to disappear from 
among the dominant families of the commonwealth. 

For more than a hundred years the Julian house seems 
to have lived in a kind of political obscurity, and when 

1 Mommsen, " Hermes," 1889, p. 355 sq. It does not seem necessary 
to assume with Mommsen that Vergil deliberately transformed lulius to 
lulus. Dionys., "Antiqq. Rom.," 8, 1, writes 'loOXos. 

2 



ANCESTRY, CHILDHOOD, EARLY YOUTH 3 

they resumed political prominence the surname (cognomen) 
of Coesar had been adopted by the entire family, with 
no further subdivision of distinguished branches, which 
subdivision was the case, e.g.^ with the Claudii^ JEmilii^ 
Cornelii^ Liciyiii^ and other houses of the Roman nobility. 
In the latter part of the Hannibalian war (208 B.C., Liv., 
27, 22) Sextius lulius Caesar governed Sicily as his prae- 
torian province. The meaning of the name Ccesar is quite 
uncertain : 1) Elephant, a Punic war association, 2) cut 
from his mother's womb, 3) blue-eyed, 4) born with a 
shock of hair. The latter is in full accord with the gen- 
eral drift of Roman nomenclature. Also it is vouched for 
by the distinguished antiquarian and domestic tutor of 
the grandsons of Csesar Augustus himself, viz. by Ver- 
rius Flaccus.i With the exception of Sex. lulius Csesar, 
consul of 157 B.C., the further Caesars down to the dic- 
tator did not achieve anything higher than praetorian 
honors. So, too, his own father. Gains lulius Csesar. 
Csesar was born on the twelfth day of the month Quinc- 
tilis, 100 B.C., at Csesar's death named July. The most 
prominent figure in public life at that time was Gaius 
Marius, the great captain and plebeian leader, who in 
middle life had married luliii, Csesar's aunt; thus this 
aristocratic house had allied itself, quite deliberately, we 
may say, with the politics of the plebs, for all marriages 
of the aristocracy were, as a rule, arranged by the heads 
of houses. At Csesar's birth both Pompey and Cicero 
were six years old ; Varro, the scholar and writer, and 
later a lieutenant of Pompey, Varro, who survived them 
all, was sixteen ; Hortensius, fourteen. Through his 
mother Aurelia, young Csesar was connected with a dis- 
tinguished family whose principal members in public life 
sided with the conservatives, but maintained clear vision 
in dealing with necessary reforms. 

1 ' Coesar, quod est cognomen luliorum, a ccesarie dictus est, qui scili- 
cet cum csesarie natus est.' 



4 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

As to the body and substance of young Caesar's instruc- 
tion, it was, primarily, Greek. And the preponderance 
of Greek had really been well understood from the begin- 
nings — late beginnings — of literary culture in a com- 
munity whose earliest literary men were either of Greek 
birth, or at least of Greek culture. Likewise the earliest 
teachers. The}^ taught literature, and by ultimate repro- 
duction of Greek literary forms and species in Latin, they 
maintained Greek, as we clearly see, as the prototype for 
every form of cultured or finished expression. 

And the finished faculty of a certain mastery did not 
lose itself in vague dictations of sesthetical or psychologi- 
cal analyses which are often inflicted on young people in 
our modern ways, but in imitation and reproduction : 
essentially the manner revived in the renaissance of the 
Italian Humanists. All of it, however, had a preparatory 
relation to the study of rhetoric. And this was, if pos- 
sible, even more distinctly a Greek professional thing. 

When young Csesar was eight years of age, in 92, the 
censors then in office, of whom L. Licinius Crassus, foremost 
orator of his day, was one, closed the Latin rhetoricians' 
schools ^ : which merely benefited the Greek professional 
teachers. Therefore, whereas the practical and ultimate 
fruition of this Grseco-Roman culture was Latin oratory 
on the forum, or before juries, or by and by in the senate,^ 
Greek made that deep impression on the mind which so 
perfect a literature, acquired hand in hand with the fac- 
ulty of easy Greek speech, was bound to make on a gifted 
boy between eight and fifteen or so. Cicero's Philhellen- 
ismS is familiar to the world, and as for Caesar (when 
Athens herself surrendered in 48, not long after Pharsa- 

1 Suet., "de Ehetoribus," 1. 

2 Sententiain dicere. 

' It had, by the bye, a continuous practical side ; e.g., " Cicero ad prse- 
turam usque etiam Greece declamavit," Sueton., " Rhet.," 1. Cicero had 
the power of addressing the city council of Syracuse in Greek. Cf. also 
"Orator," 12. 



ANCESTRY, CHILDHOOD, EARLY YOUTH 5 

los, to his lieutenant, Fufius Calenus), he spared the people 
of Athens absolutely (^fJLrjSh /nvrja-t/cafcrjaa^ a6(pov<; cKJ^ijKe, 
Dio Cass., 42, 14), merely adding that, while they had 
committed great misdemeanors, " the^ were saved hy their 
dead.''' Here is a worthy manifestation of classicist re- 
gard. We know through Suetonius (" De Grammaticis," 
7) the name of one at least of young Caesar's literary 
teachers, viz. Antonius Gnipho ; he " is said to have been 
of great native ability, of an extraordinary faculty of 
memory, and not less learned in Greek than in Latin. ..." 
The literary valuation of Terence, the translator of Me- 
nander,! I ^^^ inclined to assign to young Caesar, not to 
his matnrer years : versification on standard themes, pos- 
sibly produced and recited under the auspices of Gnipho 
or some other grammatieus in the collegium poetarum, the 
only place in Rome at that time where technical faculty 
of versification could be exhibited on stated occasions 
before experts. ^ 

Of Caesar's father we know one thing only, but that a 
matter of vast importance. Young Caesar was in his six- 
teenth year : the elder Caesar was at Pisae, on the Tuscan 
coast : probably a Marian, he had not accompanied Sulla 
in the latter's eastern campaigns. One morning, as he 
was engaged in putting on his shoes (the tying of a gen- 
tleman's shoes was an elaborate affair), he died (Plin., 
"N. H.," 7, 181), in middle life, probably from the burst- 
ing of some blood-vessel in the brain. Here, too, was a 
physical diathesis due to heredity, for his own father had 
died in exactly the same way, at about the same stage of 
life. 

Now young Caesar had completed his fifteenth year at 
the time of this domestic catastrophe. Under the civil 
law the completion of the fourteenth year made a male 

1 In the " Vita," by Suetonius. 

2 See my paper on " The Collegium Poetarum at Rome," Amer. Jour- 
nal of Philology^ 1905. 



6 ANNALS OF CiESAR 

ward free from guardiansMp. Under tutela, therefore, 
young Caesar never passed. When his father suddenly 
expired, the youth became at one stroke civilly indepen- 
dent, sui iuris. Moreover, in the first days of 86 his 
uncle Marius and the latter's colleague, the popular leader 
Cinna, had appointed the lad priest of Jupiter (^flamen 
dialis)^ that is, nominated him, as it seems, for the next 
vacancy ^ ; this during his father's lifetime, and of course 
with the latter's approval. It was an early identification 
of the lad with the popular party. 

When did Caesar receive the toga virilis? This act, 
which concerned not only the family, but the roster of 
citizenship as well, was often, though not necessarily, 
celebrated on March 15, the Liheralia.^ We must be 
content, in young Csesar's case, with assuming that this 
important first step towards maturity and manhood was 
gone through with before his sixteenth year, possibly in 
March, 84. Even before this time, the youth, who had 
no brother, had been (Suet., " Cses.," 1) betrothed to Cos- 
sutia, destined to be a great heiress, though of a family 
merely equestrian, not senatorial. But, sometime after 
January, 84, perhaps after January 1, 83, young Csesar 
married Cornelia, the daughter of Cinna, four times con- 
sul : whether before or after the death of that leader of 
the democratic or popular party, so called, we cannot 
determine. At all events it was his own act, and a curi- 
ous and puzzling act : it is not likely that Sulla had yet 
landed at Brundisium : many things were yet coming and 
therefore indefinite. We are startled by an almost un- 
canny faculty in the mere youth to determine for himself, 
and to determine with a view to politics. To a sober re- 
flection that marriage might have seemed both extremely 
unwise, hazardous, and unprofitable. If ever there was 
a political union, this seems to have been such a one. 

1 Velleius, 2, 43, 1. 

2 Marquardt, " Privatleben der Roemer," 1886, p. 124. 



ANCESTRY, CHILDHOOD, EARLY YOUTH 7 

Was it that the budding youth wished to identify himself 
in some striking way with the (late ?) head of the popular 
party, who, however, had ruled the peninsula and the 
western part of the empire entirely as an autocrat ? Did 
young Caesar make this match with the approval or 
against the advice of his mother Aurelia? Her brother 
or brothers were then in Sulla's headquarters beyond seas. 
Clearly, here was no cautious timeserver nor charac- 
ter who would put his ear to the ground to measure the 
weight and impact of the tread of coming events. The 
politics of Rome, however great and broadening the em- 
pire, were still the politics of a single city, and the trend 
of latter events had more and more assumed a character 
of decisive persons and personalities. But the names of 
Marius, Cinna, and Sulla urge upon me and my readers 
the necessity of gaining a fair basis for following the 
earliest acts of young Caesar's public life. The entire 
political life of the imperial city was then a movement on 
an inclined plane and breeding a series of crises. Let us 
make our second chapter a political retrospect. 



CHAPTER II 

POLITICAL RETROSPECT : FROM THE GRACCHI TO SULLA. 
THE FIRST GREAT TEST OF YOUNG C^SAR 

Rome never was a republic in our American sense ; we 
may truly say, as I have said elsewliere,^ that " the battles 
of Rome were won, her administration determined, her 
children begotten, and her blood shed, for the interests 
of a small number of great families." But for a long 
time the sense of economic suffering and injustice had not 
assumed a political or decisive importance. Soon, how- 
ever, after Rome seemed to have no more foreign foe 
worthy of her concern, this new movement of domestic 
unrest pressed to the front. 

The Romans, in the course of their peninsular con- 
quests, had from the beginning appropriated much land. 
This state domain, or ager publicus^ was let thus (Appian, 
" B. C," 1, 7) : the tenants were to pay the state one tithe 
of crops (to3v aireipofxevaiv^^ one fifth of fruit (roiV cfyvrevo- 
fiivoav)^ and a certain quota of flocks. And whereas they 
did this with a view to the growth of the Italian (so 
Appian, better say Latin') population, preeminently hardy 
as it was, the very opposite resulted. The rich in time 
got hold of this undivided land or domain, extending their 
own tenure by purchase, by wheedling, and by violence, 
thus creating enormous grazing districts instead of farms,^ 

1 "Testimonium Animse," 1908, p. 329. 

2 While I am writing, the movement for conservation, as opposed to 
exploitation, stands in the forefront of our common concerns. The paral- 
lels of Rome afford at least a few points of analogy. Grave are the 
much-quoted words of the elder Pliny : " And to tell the truth, the Broad 
Estates (latifundia) have ruined Italy, now indeed even the provinces 
also." C"N. H.," 18, 35.) The presentation of Appian, which I have 

8 



POLITICAL RETROSPECT 9 

slaves of course being more profitable as laborers and 
herdsmen. Further, the interest of these great landlords 
was that the slaves should multiply as much as possible, 
because the wars did not decimate them at all. Thus the 
free yeomen were crowded out, the slaves abounding : 
Italy was overtaken by a positive stoppage in the increase 
of population as well as by a deterioration of her men, 
physically and socially, being ground under poverty and 
taxes (after 168 B.C.?) and military service. 

Thus Rome as a political power was grievously injured 
in this stunting of the very personnel of her *' allies." Still 
people shrank from reviewing tenure and title ; the right 
of long possession seemed a bar also. The laws of Licinius 
and Sextius (367 B.C.) had limited tenure of the public 
domain to 500 iugera^ grazing being confined to 100 head 
of cattle or 500 sheep or swine. For stewards and sur- 
veyors they were to employ free persons. 

No genuine betterment, however, followed : the inter- 
ests caused transfer of lands by sham civil process to 
persons who stood close to them. 

Most of the great landholders treated the ancient stat- 
ute with contempt until Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus in 
133 B.C. renewed (aveKaivi^e^ Appian, " B. C," 1, 9) and 
for the first time enforced the ancient Licinian laws. An 
actual commission of three surveyed the land and took 
practical steps towards expropriation. It was this com- 
mission which prevented the landlords from treating this 
law with contempt, as the old law of 367 had been treated. 

Also the sale of land allotments was forbidden by a 
provision of the Sempronian statute. 

Now the landlords assumed the tone of injured bene- 
factors : they also pointed to ancestral tombs which even 

made my own, may be deduced from a political speech of Tiberius Grac- 
chus himself. Plutarch, "Tib. Gracchus," c. 15, cites definitely certain 
points (iTTLxeLp-nfjiaTa) from a concrete political speech of the latter. 
1 A iugerum is almost f of an acre. 



10 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

under the civil law were loci sacri: others pleaded that 
they had invested their wives' dowries in this way, or 
made settlements upon their daughters. Others had 
mortgaged such lands : the money lenders foresaw great 
trouble in the task of coming to their own, and "alto- 
gether (Appian, 1, 10) the lamenting and expression of 
indignation was unseemly." 

I have no space here even to trace the further political 
troubles of Tiberius, nor the far more trenchant and radi- 
cal legislation of his remarkable younger brother Gains 
through the mechanism of tribunician power stretched to 
the utmost. Nor must I dwell upon the death of Cor- 
nelia's great sons in riotous procedures for which the land- 
lord party was directly and conspicuously responsible. 

It will be clear later on that in a measure the politician 
Csesar entered into the inheritance of these wonderful 
brothers, and in his agrarian law (or laws) gained the 
good will of the many. Further, we shall see how he was 
able (leaving out of consideration his sword and treasure) 
to rely upon and to consider as his personal clients num- 
berless Romans, Latins, Italians, who with some reason 
looked upon him as a champion and benefactor of the 
poor and of the many<as over against the special interests 
represented in the perpetual executive council of the 
empire, the senate. 

Now it cannot be denied that the authors of agrarian 
laws were held up, in the older and simpler days of the 
republic, as traitors who strove and schemed for autocratic 
power, and under guise of benefactions, or even of per- 
sonal sacrifices, plotted to overthrow the common freedom 
and the rights of all. Thus had perished Maelius and 
Manlius in the olden time. 

As for Tiberius and Gains, the landlords of course, who 
had by a quasi-governmental authority slain the brothers, 
attempted to justify these acts as beneficial to the com- 
monwealth at large, as wholesome removals of fire- 



POLITICAL RETROSPECT 11 

brands, disturbers of vested rights, prospective autocrats 
or tyrants. 

The earliest historical record here quotable was written 
by Asellio,^ a contemporary of the elder Gracchus. He 
served under Scipio ^milianus in Spain, a man who 
strove to quicken the moral and political sense of his 
readers, not a mere annalist and chronicler. Unfortu- 
nately, but few shreds are preserved for us, the chief ones 
by Gellius. Still, they are the pencillings of a witness : 
" For whenever Gracchus (the elder) set out from his 
house, a body of never less than three or four thousand 
persons was wont to follow him." The most impressive 
condemnation, however, of the elder Gracchus was pro- 
nounced by his own brother-in-law, the foremost man of 
his time, Scipio JEmilianus himself ; the Homeric verse 
rose to his lips : 

" Thus perish e'en another who would such things perform I '* 

Now the Pontifex Nasica, the chief slayer of Tiberius, was 
by no means reputed a saviour of the state by the people 
at large, but hooted on the streets. The Senate, indeed, 
sent this champion to the East under guise of some politi- 
cal mission, and he died in quasi-exile at Pergamum. 

The splendid achievements and the lofty character of 
Scipio ^milianus himself did not spare him the necessity 
of giving utterance in public to his opinion of the martyr 
of the people's cause. And it was not merely the desire of 
the popular politicians to embarrass him before the people, 
but they knew that the pulse-beat of the plebs of Rome 
impatiently demanded to know what the eminent gentle- 
man thought of that death. The political assassination 
of Scipio (129 B.C.) was shrouded in mystery at that time 
— he had indeed defied the surging masses on the forum 
as a mob "to whom Italy was but a stepmother." (Veil., 
2, 41.) 

1 Peter, "Hist. Rom. Fragmenta," p. 108. 



12 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

As for Opimius the consul (121), slayer, or, if you pre- 
fer, executioner of Gaius Gracchus, he too failed to be 
prosperous later on. Opimius, mind you, had been in a 
way sheltered by the declaration of martial law, the noted 
Senatus consultum ultimum : " Let the consuls see to it that 
the state suffer no impairment " ! 

Later on we shall see that the adroit politician Csesar 
(in 63, case of Rabirius) with fair success attempted to 
demolish that ancient bulwark of the powers that were. 

For a long time, indeed, the Roman senate had been in 
truth the repository of delegated power wielded for the 
state at large. But this beneficial and representative 
character it had lost. 



The second great matter in this retrospect is the vast 
change, nay, metamorphosis, in the position of the trihuni 
plehis. Gaius, in an incisive manner, had both weakened 
and isolated the senatorial class by removing from them, 
nay, by setting over against them, the influential body of 
the equestrian citizens. The power to absolve and to 
condemn, the privilege of jury service, was taken from 
the senate and given to the knights ; it remained law for 
some forty years. 

During the Jugurthine war some of the chief corrup- 
tionists in the senate (whose palms were tainted with 
Jugurtha's gold) were found guilty by a jury whose bias 
Cicero readily charges to the fact that they were " Grrac- 
chian jurors.'''' 

Thus the cleavage in the very structure of Rome's polit- 
ical household went on apace, for the maintenance of a 
conservative wrong is no less a disintegrating force than 
the assertion of bold innovation by reckless radicals. 

This disintegration was mightily accelerated by the 
domestic history of the poor peasant's son of Arpinum, 
Gaius Marius. One of the five or six great captains of 



POLITICAL RETROSPECT 13 

Rome, he rose to eminence in despite and in defiance of 
the intrenched aristocracy. He bore the consciousness 
of his specific worth in a peculiar way. Clearly there 
was a chronic soreness at the aristocracy in the hearts 
and lives of the common people, and the evil times had 
come when it was easy to increase that soreness, and when 
men rose to power through that process. Sallust himself, 
who gained distinction and great wealth from his mem- 
bership in the popular party and his loyalty to the leader 
thereof, — that keen-visaged historian himself ("Jug.," 
85 sqq.), presents Marius in the latter's first brief canvass 
for consular honors as anything but humble, indeed as 
defiant, insolent, ostentatious in his contempt for the 
aristocracy. Here was a man of humble birth, without 
achievements of ancestors, without clientships, who boasted 
of it that he could not speak Greek. And on the morrow 
the tremendous emergency of the Cimbrian and Teuton 
invasion of Gaul and Spain and Italy proved that the 
governing aristocracy were absolutely in need of this pas- 
sionate and defiant plebeian. 

And here the necessities of empire, nay, of self-preser- 
vation, broke through and broke down all previous tradi- 
tion, the very limitations ^ of the republican government 
and supremacy. 

The first six consulates, then, of Marius occurred in 
these years : the first in 107 ; the next five were continu- 
ous, in 104, 103, 102, 101, and 100 B.C., when Caesar was 
born. 

But we must not overlook the incessant efforts of the 
privileged class to undo the work of the Gracchi. Not 
long (Appian, "B. C," 1, 27) after the death of Gaius a 
statute was passed,^ a plebiscitum, put forward, too, not 

1 For details of the Lex Villia Annalis of 180 b.c, v. Mommsen, 
"Staatsrecht," 3d ed., I, p. 523 sqq. 

2 Botsford, "The Roman Assemblies." Mommsen, " C. I. Lat.," 
Vol. I, pp. 75 sqq. 



14 ANNALS OF CAESAR 

by a consul, but by a tribune of the people, Spurius Tho- 
rius, probably in 111 B.C., entirely in the interes't of the 
occupiers (possessors) as over against the state. Thus 
holdings were confirmed and (according to Appian, I.e.} 
certain rent charges were established, and thus a fund was 
to be made which was to be distributed, pauperizing the 
poorer folk in town still more. These rent moneys, how- 
ever, were abolished after a short time by " another tri- 
bunus plebis," and thus, as Appian observes, the plebs 
was utterly deprived of all betterment. 

Many tribunes of the people were descended from the 
office-holding aristocracy, and merely passed through this 
" honor " in their political ascent, compelled often to play 
a double role. An honest effort was made by a young 
nobleman as tribunus plebis in 104, L. Marcius Philippus, 
to help the plebs. In 104 or thereabouts he proposed a new 
plebiscitum for agrarian reform ; but he soon allowed the 
matter to lapse, because the pressure of his own class was 
stronger than the brief flash of a political enthusiasm. In 
his temporary advocacy of his own bill he made the remark 
which startled his generation profoundly, viz., that there 
were not two thousand^ persons in the commonwealth 
who possessed property, viz., the overwhelming mass was 
essentially proletarian. 

But to return to Marius. In the coterie of demagogues 
who clustered about the great captain, the saviour of 
Italy, the most prominent was Appuleius Saturninus. 
He, too, strove to step into the shoes of the Gracchi. The 
lands in question were near the mouth of the Rhone, 
where Marius had won his greatest victory. He, by the 
bye, in a somewhat new and peculiar manner had come to 
be — had perhaps deliberately made himself — the patron 
and protector of the lowest class of citizens, the capite 

1 Cic. "Off.," 2, 73. Cicero keenly disliked the utterance, but does 
not disprove it. 



POLITICAL RETROSPECT 15 

censi,^ who had no property rating at all. But they had 
the powerful claim of stipendia, of service, of years of 
campaigning. The loot of the slain myriads of northern 
barbarians was no compensation to them. As for the 
money gathered from the sale of prisoners of war, it went 
to the treasury. 

Now, then, as Gains Gracchus in Africa, so Saturninus 
proposed to assign lands to establish colonies in southern 
Gaul. 

This agrarian law at that particular juncture of affairs 
the senators did not dare to antagonize. Cicero (" Sest.," 
37) called it later on "a statute passed by force." Inci- 
dentally, through the oath which the haughty Metellus re- 
fused to take, Marius accomplished the latter's banishment. 

In the end, however, after the assassination of the 
worthy Memmius (whose consulate would have check- 
mated Saturninus), that people's man was disavowed by 
his own leader, who had to consent to his destruction. 

To Marius there had been married Julia, the sister of 
Caesar's father. While thus this ultra-aristocratic house 
had connected itself with the party of the populares^ we 
must not neglect to observe that these democratic leaders 
were not socially democratic. Marius himself became im- 
mensely wealthy. As for the aspiring Csesar, when he 
had barely entered the senate (in 68 B.C.), he said, in the 
funeral eulogy of his aunt Julia, widow of Marius : " The 
maternal descent of my aunt Julia came from the kings, 
the paternal is associated with the immortal gods. For 
from Ancus Marcius are the Marcii Reges, of which name 
was her mother ; from Venus are the I alii, of which stock 
is our family. There is therefore in our pedigree both 
the august eminence of kings who have the greatest power 
among men and the religious solemnity of gods, in whose 
power the kings themselves are." (Suet., "Cses.," 6.) 
An aristocrat, then, as regards his person and social con- 
iSall., "Jug.," 86. 



16 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

sciousness, no matter what line of political advancement 
he chose. The very profusion of his later bounties made 
him a veritable demigod in the eyes of the multitude. The 
' democratic ' movement in Rome was indeed sui generis. 

But to return : When Caesar was about ten years old, 
all Italy was shaken to its very foundations by that crisis 
which is known as the ' war of the Allies ' (^helium sociale}^ 
or Marsian war, or Italian war. 

In 125 the Latin ' allies ' had held hopes for the Roman 
franchise, when the consul Fulvius Flaccus strove for it ; 
again the matter was stirred in the second tribunate of the 
great Gains. It was with the aid of the Latins that Satur- 
ninus had carried his Agrarian Law. The decline of busi- 
ness and prosperity in many country towns of Italy had 
induced many Latins to settle in Rome and probably to 
act as citizens. As for the burdens, they had had them 
for a long time. 

Latins, I say, for it seems obvious that a man whose 
dialect placed him in Apulia or Bruttium or Umbria, 
whose speech betrayed him, could not safely demean him- 
self as a Roman citizen in Rome. 

The ablest and purest statesmen in the Aristocratic 
party, Crassus and Sctevola, as consuls in 95 had procured 
the enactment of a law^ to check and severely punish the 
practical assumption by these (technical) aliens of Roman 
citizenship. " However (Asconius, ib.), so estranged were 
the feelings of the chief peoples of Italy by this law, that 
this proved the very greatest cause of the Italian war 
which broke out three years (really five) later." 

In 91 came forward a tribune of the people who seems 
worthy of the great title of statesman, and clearly was no 
mere agent of a big politician. 

The status of the exclusively equestrian juries had be- 
come intolerable, as is always the case when a compact 

1 In Asconius, Corneliana, p. 67, Orelli, I would read ^ legem . . . de 
redigundis in sua{m) civitate{m) sociis.' 



POLITICAL RETROSPECT 17 

class has the monopoly of an important governmental 
power. The scandalous condemnation of the pure and 
noble-minded P. Rutilius Rufus (93 B.C.) had emphasized 
this. M. Livius Drusus now proposed an equal partition 
between the senatorial and equestrian class. To this end, 
some three hundred of the most worthy ^ knights were to 
receive seats in the senate, and from this body, so consti- 
tuted and reinforced, the juries were to be selected. 

Further, the allies in Italy were to receive the Roman 
citizenship. He also proposed an agrarian law so thor- 
ough that, as he himself said, he had omitted nothing from 
partition but the mud of the highways and the sky over- 
head. We see the spirits of the Gracchi — while their 
bodies had long perished — would indeed "go marching 
on " somehow. Their reforms could not be gotten out of 
the world. 

The capitalists whose corrupt jurors Livius had sought 
to bring to the bar were bitterly hostile to the great re- 
former : their mouthpiece or representative, it seems, was 
the consul Philippus. On September 13 Livius had sum- 
moned a senate : the feud between him and the consul 
just named was then intense. A great crisis was clearly 
on. On that day the foremost orator of that generation, 
young Cicero's beloved and immortalized exemplar, Cras- 
sus, spoke in the senate for the last time. Drusus was 
charged, it seems, by the consul Philippus ^ with the or- 
ganization of a sworn secret society to support the tribune 
with blood and fortune in his effort to gain the Roman 
franchise for the Italian allies. On September 20, Cras- 
sus, the foremost debater of the senate, died. It was after 

1 dpLa-Tiv87}v TTpocTKaTaXeyrjvai., App., " B. C," 1, 35. 

2 The so-called BpKos ^iXlinrov, now preserved in Diodorus, fragments 
of book 37, c. 11. Ludwig Lange considers it a forgery of Philippus. 
Livy ("Periocha," 71) seems to have been very unfriendly to Drusus. 
A charge of wide-spread secret movement must have been current. Th. 
Mommsen, indeed, operates with the "Geheimbund" as an historical 
fact. 



18 ANNALS OF CESAR 

this date that the tribune forced a vote on his various 
laws, coupled together in a single bill (^per saturam)^ all 
but that of the franchise. 

The senate vainly declared- the leges Livice unconsti- 
tutional. The tribune did not even block this senatus- 
consultiim by intercessio. October went by. Now Livius 
had to keep his promise to the Italian allies. At this 
point it seems, as Appian transcribed, that both senate 
and knights had come to be as one in their hatred of 
Drusus. The plebeians alone rejoiced in the prospect of 
colonies. (App., 1, 36.) 

Soon after, this statesman was stabbed to death while 
walking up and down amid hundreds of clients, visitors, 
supporters, petitioners, in the atrium of his mansion, clearly 
still young and so enthusiastically optimistic in his vision 
of future achievement. 

He stands to-day, a truncated and broken shaft of 
splendid base and noble design, in the museum of Roman 
worthies, greater by far as a noble public man than 
Marius or Sulla. A greater Rome would he have had. 
Had the day gone by when argument and debate, when, 
indeed, parliamentary methods could better anything in 
the political fabric ? 

Beginning with the persecution of corrupt jurors, he 
had in less than one civil year advanced to the possible 
limits of radical reforms. Who hired the assassin ? Was 
it not the gold of the banking and financial class ? On 
the other hand, neither people nor senate ever decreed 
any investigation. 

Their champion foully stricken to the ground, the Ital- 
ians now drew the sword to claim political equality. The 
war broke out late in 91, and filled with pregnant events 
the years 90 and 89. So much was there, that the recital 
of this brief period filled not less than five complete books 
of Livy: 72, 73, 74, 75, 76. 

Gross acts of tyranny and brutal perversion of elemen- 



POLITICAL RETROSPECT 19 

tary rights had been suffered ^ by the ' Italici,' and there 
was no provision of appeal. 



The terrible scenes of Asculum Picenum (Ascoli) were 
probably enacted in the winter of 91-90. Corfinium, char- 
acteristically renamed " Italica," the capital of the new 
Confederation, had a central position between north and 
south. Of the two "consuls," G. Pompsedius Silo, a 
Marsian, represented the more moderate element in this 
revolution, viz., those Italians who sincerely desired gen- 
uine political equalization with Rome. On the other 
hand, Mutilus, a Samnite, had as his military province 
Samnium, Apulia, Lucania : these southerly men were 
more deeply embittered, and aimed at nothing less than 
the actual overthrow of Rome. Each consul had six 
"prgetors." 

In surveying this desperate struggle one is reminded 
of a game of chess with players equally matched, where 
pawn for pawn, rook for rook, bishop for bishop, there is 
merely an exchange of pieces, and no onlooker would dare 
even to surmise as to which one was at the end to check- 
mate the other. In 90 B.C. the consul L. Julius Csesar 
was defeated by the Samnites. Tliey captured Nola (not 
far from Naples and Pompeii) and put to the sword there 
the Roman prsetor in command. 

The other consul of Rome, P. Rutilius Rufus, was de- 
feated by the Marsi and died himself. With better suc- 
cess old Marius, the latter 's legate, fought them with his 
separate corps. A state of siege (^saga sumere) had actu- 
ally been ordained at the capital. But later on (Li v., 
"Per.," 73) Julius Cyesar fought with better success 
against the Samnites. While their side, again, captured 
the Roman colony of JEsernia (northwest of Bovianum), 

1 Mommsen (II, 219) compared the acts of England which alienated 
the American colonies: a weak parallel. Marsicum Bellum in Pauly 
gives an orderly and exact relation of the events. 



20 ANNALS OF CESAR 

Marius in his northerly section routed the Marsians, a 
commander of the Marrucini being slain. 

In 89 Cn. Pompeius Strabo (father of the great Pom- 
pey) defeated the Picentes, and the capital (Li v., 74) was 
greatly cheered. Marius had a drawn battle with the 
Marsians. Then, for the first time, freedmen were en- 
:olled at Rome as soldiers. The movement begun by 
Marius therefore went forward : more and more there 
came to be a class, of professional soldiers : mercenaries, 
'^'----aiot citizens in arms. 

Meanwhile, both in Etruria and in Umbria the Italian 
confederation gained new members. But here the eagles 
of Rome were immediately successful. 

Sulla, legate probably of Pompey's, defeated the Sam- 
nites and took two of their camps. 

At the capital the bankers and money lenders, still in 
possession of the exclusive power of sitting as jurors, suf- 
fered of course, during the war, in their business. At 
the very beginning of the great contest, they succeeded 
even by intimidation (Appian, "B. C," 1, 37) in having 
passed a plebiscitum (Lex Varia), which provided for an 
investigation of persons responsible (on the Roman side) 
for the revolution ; we must assume, of persons whose acts 
had furnished provocation. The victims proved to be, 
indeed, prominent members of the senatorial class. Bestia, 
Cotta, Mummius,^ went into exile. We see these things 
as symptoms of the bitter antagonism of the two classes : 
we would gladly see further into the underlying causes 
if we could. Later in the war, when credit sank, the civil 
chief justice (^prcetor urhanus)^ a senator of course, Sem- 
pronius Asellio, came to the support of debtors by renew- 
ing (Appian, 1, 54) an ancient but of course obsolete law 
which forbade all usury whatsoever, not merely excess. 
The capitalists of the forum thereupon conspired and slew 

1 Shall we make Appian personally responsible for the grotesque speci- 
fication Moi^/t/itos 5' 6 TT]v 'EXXdSa e\djv (146 B.C.) ? 



POLITICAL RETROSPECT 21 

him when he was in the act of worshipping (sacrificing) 
before tlie temple of Castor and Pollux on the forum. 
It was about seven in the morning. — Indeed, Gaius had 
sown dragons' teeth in his reform of the courts. The 
perpetrators were never brought to trial. 



On the whole, in the latter part of 89 B.C. and in the 
earlier part of 88, the military fortune of Rome began 
to improve. The insurgents gradually withdrew to the 
south ; abandoning Corfinium, they made Bovianum their 
second capital. 

In the end, or, to speak precisely, much before the 
end, the senate determined to meet the situation by new 
enactments. 

The first concession,^ probably after the campaign of 90, 
was introduced by the consul Julius himself : the essential 
provision was that communities must accept the Roman 
franchise by an act of their own. Naples and Heraclea 
declined, probably by a specific vote of their electorate. 
In the second year (89) came the Lex Plautia et Papiria, 
a statute put forward by tribunes. Its main provisions 
were that aspirants for Roman citizenship were taken in 
rather as individuals than collectively by communities. 
They must have been regularly enrolled in an allied com- 
munity, must further have had a residence in Italy when 
the law was adopted, must have entered their name with 
a prsetor (z.e., physically present in Rome itself) within 
sixty days, (Cic, " Arch.," 7.) 

The stubborn unwillingness of the Roman people to be 
fair or moderately just towards their Italian quondam 
subjects had cost them dear and had proved futile in the 
end. The lowest estimates of ancient historians places 

1 L. Lange, 3, 110-111 ; Botsford, 401 ; Gellius, 16, 13, 6. The editors 
(as Long) of Cic. " Balb.," 21, fail to give a lucid logical explanation of 
^'•fundum fieri.'''' 



22 ANNALS OF CAESAR 

the joint total loss of Italy and in Italy at 100,000-150,000 
men : others estimated as high as 300,000. Lucania and 
Samnium for the present maintained a sullen attitude, 
neither joyous nor loyal nor fraternal, towards their 
ancient oppressors. 

At this point it seems wise to give some survey of the 
later census figures. The official returns, as available 
now, were as follows (according to Hertz's text): 

In 142 B.C. (Livy, " Per.," 54) . . 328,442 (civium capita) 

136 B.C. (Liv., 56) 377,923 

131 B.C. (Liv., 59) 318,823 

125 B.C. (Liv., 60) 394,726 

115 B.C. (Liv., 63) 394,336 

No official enumeration was accomplished in 109, 102, 97, 
92 B.C. In 86, during Cinna's virtual reign, Marcius 
Philippus (consul of 91), the champion of the anti-Livian 
movement of 91 B.C., was one of the censors. According 
to Jerome the figures for this, the first census after the 
tremendous struggle of Italy, were but 463,000. But the 
soldiers of Sulla, and the major part of the nobility at his 
headquarters, were certainly not counted. 

To return to the settlement of the Italian war : Clearly 
only the fairly well-to-do probably would have taken steps, 
before the expiration of the sixty days, to have themselves 
enrolled. It was a serious matter personally to travel to 
Rome and there file one's name. In a grudging and nig- 
gardly fashion, then, did the city of the seven hills extend 
the franchise. Would an Italian dread the lictors of a 
Roman magistrate as before ? Would a citizen of distant 
domicile have a reasonable opportunity to be a candidate 
for Roman honors ? Surely not, if the forum knew him 
not, neither him nor his purse. 



Advance we now to the year 88. Sulla was consul, 
and to him the task of the Mithridatic war was assigned, 



POLITICAL RETROSPECT 23 

instead of to old Marius, in whose shaggy breast political 
passion flamed with unabated intensity. Sulla was com- 
pelled to return from Campania to extinguish the political 
fires kindled in his rear. First of all Roman politicians, 
he entered the capital with an army equipped to strike 
swiftly. Marius' managing tribune Sulpicius perished. 

If the legions had been purely citizens in arms, all these 
things could not have come to pass. But at that time 
this Eastern war, and wars in general, were conceived as 
huge jobs, easy and replete with gold for the commander 
and staff, and looked upon by the rank and file as oppor- 
tunities for enrichment by loot and bounties. We observe 
(App., " B. C," 1, 56) that the motives which Sulla oper- 
ated with in working upon his troops in Campania dealt 
exclusively with these things, such as move mercenaries, 
not political or moral appeals, such as move citizens. 

In the Esquiline quarter, then, there transpired not a 
mere riot of civil factions, but an onset with trumpets and 
standards, — civil war indeed. In vain INIarius took the 
one radical step as yet untaken : he summoned the slaves 
to freedom, shaking the very foundations of the social 
fabric. The popular leaders fled, Marius and his young 
son being among the twelve declared public enemies. 
Even then Sulla appeared not as a compromising states- 
man, but as the champion of the principle that no statute 
whatever must reach the comitia trihuta unless it had first 
been approved by the senate. ^ 

But we cannot follow Sulla to Greece in his task of 
recovering there Rome's Eastern provinces. 

In the latter part of 87 Marius returned from his ad- 
venturous exile, attended and indeed coached and directed 
by a more resourceful politician, the expelled consul, L. 
Cornelius Cinna, whose daughter later on young Caesar 
married. Expelled had Cinna been by his colleague Oc- 

1 fjLTjd^v eTL air po(3oij\€vrov is rbv 5-f}ixov iacpipeaOai, App., "B. C," 1, 59. 
Cf. Botsford, " Assemblies," p, 407. 



24 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

tavius, for he had broken his pledge to Sulla and taken 
steps to have the new citizens enrolled in all the thirty- 
five tribes, and not vote after these, as the conservative 
policy had prescribed. 

Recalled, Marius joined Cinna with six thousand Etrus- 
__jcans. ;' More effectively than before he again promised 
freedom, on landing at Telamon on the Tuscan coast, to 
those slaves who would follow him. 

The saviour of Italy was then past seventy. With de- 
liberate design (Plut., "Mar.," 51) he assumed the role 
of the miserable and pitiable exile, appearing in mean 
garb, and refusing the insignia of power. Immediately 
it was seen that military measures were directed by a 
master hand : Marius promptly controlled the grain supply 
of the capital by holding Ostia with a squadron and by 
sweeping the coast. Soon he held the heights of the 
Janiculum. On the other side the consul Octavius, rep- 
resenting the conservative interest in this crisis, firmly 
refused to appeal to the slaves. Meanwhile Metellus Pins 
arrived from his operations against the Samnites. For 
these had not yet been completely pacified, nor satisfied 
with the political offerings of the Lex Plautia et Papiria. 

Now the forces of Octavius (they, too, soldiers rather 
than citizens) called upon Metellus Pius, a much more 
experienced commander, to lead them. But when Metel- 
lus, a loyal conservative, bade them return to their mili- 
tary allegiance, they joined Marius. Poor Octavius was 
entirely under thrall of soothsayers, Chaldseans, Sibyllists. 
These told him to abide there and all would be well. He 
was dragged from the tribunal (aTro tov /Sij/jLaro^, Plut., 
"Mar.," 42) even before the entry of Marius in person, 
and put to the sword. Cinna thus regained his own con- 
sular office in a quasi-legal way, and Marius, mute, but 
seething with resolutions of revenge, stood by the curulian 
chair of the consul. Gloomy was his countenance and 
truculent his glance, as of one who soon was to fill the 



POLITICAL RETROSPECT 25 

imperial city with the corpses of his victims. In that 
anarchy of revenge all the splendid services of Julia's 
husband were extinguished. A certain class hatred filled 
his breast. His mad fury seems to have designated as 
unworthy to live all prominent or eminent members of 
the conservative party, with little or no concern as to 
personal relations to himself. 

Thus perished the great orator, M. Antonius, and his 
own associate of the bloody day of the Raudian Plains 
(101 B.C.), Lutatius Catulus: '•^ Moriendum est!'' So 
died C. lulus Ctesar, so L. Julius Csesar Strabo, the ora- 
tor and man of letters. ^ Their heads were placed on 
spikes on the rostra. I know of no ancient historian who 
attempts to palliate these things or to find some kind of 
an excuse for the husband of Julia. That lady was still 
living, probably some twenty years younger than her con- 
sort. She had not accompanied Marius into exile : her 
brother Gains was still living. Indeed, she could not 
have attended Marius into exile, for his flight at first had 
been entirely like that of a hunted wild beast. 

In December, 87, when Rome was in the fangs of Marius 
and Cinna, the nephew of Julia was about thirteen and 
a half years old, while the brilliant Arpinate Cicero had 
almost completed his twentieth year. About thirty years 
later 2 he referred to that reign of terror thus : " In his 
return (from exile) he (Marius) almost destroyed the en- 
tire senate." 



Not long did the old campaigner enjoy his seventh and 
last consulate. 

Without the formality ^ of an election, he and Cinna 
had simply had themselves declared consuls for 86. Even 

1 Clearly there was a deep chasm in the Julian gens : the majority 
were still conservative. ^^ — ^ 

2 Post Beditum, ad Quirites, 7. 

3 Citra ulla comitia, Liv. 80. 



26 ANNALS OF CESAR 

in the thirteen days of the new political year still more 
senators perished by the decree of the consul Marius ; 
what would have happened, says Floras, if he had been 
permitted to live out his consular year ? 

As Plutarch (" Mar.," 45), admirable always in psycho- 
logical presentation, speaks of these last days, curious 
floods of reminiscence as well as ominous presentiments 
(as to Salla) surged and flowed restlessly in the soul of 
the old man. But seven days before his end he discoursed, 
amid friends, on the curious and marvellous vicissitudes 
in his life and career. Soon after — so Poseidonios ^ re- 
lated — Marius fell into a pleuritis and died on January 13. 
That Greek himself conversed with Marius, officially, about 
some public matters which had brought him to Rome from 
Rhodes. 

As for Julia's nephew, Caesar later on in many ways 
referred to Marius, but never in any but the most honor- 
able and splendid terms ; the leader of the populares pre- 
sented only the partisan view of things whenever parti- 
sanship was involved, and none other. 
/ As for young Caesar, he, as we have seen, lost his father 
some time between July 12, 85, and July 12, 84.y 

As for Cinna, who entered upon the political inheri- 
tance of Marius and waa, somehow, consul in 87, 86, 85, 
84, — Cinna, I say, presents a curious antinomy of politi- 
cal features : On the one hand, he was the leader of the 
^ popula7'es^' and the defender, ostensibly, of the new citi- 
zens; and no less was he a veritable prince or autocrat, 
who ruled Rome and Italy entirely by his own pleasure 
and discretion. 

84 

On January first of this year Cinna became consul for 
the fourth and last time. In this year, too, Sulla granted 
a peace to Mithridates in Asia Minor, at Dardanum in 

1 Clearly cited by Plutarch directly from the work (then extant) of the 
Stoic scholar. 



POLITICAL RETROSPECT 27 

the Troad. (Liv., 83.) "J.s/a" (the Roman province) 
was mulcted 20,000 talents for her revolt. 

Sulla, by the by, returning westwards, tarried in Athens 
and liad himself initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries. 
Also (Plut., ^' Sulla," 26) he acquired the library of 
Apellikon : this collection embraced most of the writings 
of Aristotle and Theophrastos not yet familiar to the 
wider public. Thus Sulla : but such acquisitions were 
more of the order of modern great collectors : not many 
aristocrats of that generation held and used these things 
as a wellspring of personal culture and noble monition. 
This man particularly was one who held his Greek culture 
much lower than cups and lust. 

Meanwhile the miserable Cinna was endeavoring to 
weather the coming storm. For Sulla's army was victori- 
ous, perfectly equipped, and had received splendid boun- 
ties from their fortune-favored commander. 

So Cinna levied troops, gathered supplies and funds. 
To the new citizens particularly did he appeal, claiming 
to be their benefactor and one who had incurred grave 
dangers for their sake. (App., "B. C," 1, 75.) 

The senate, under leadership of C. Valerius Flaccus, 
reestablished relations with Sulla at Athens. The con- 
servative champion in his turn enumerated the splendid 
series of his public services and achievements, and urged 
how those in power at home had had him declared a pub- 
lic enemy, had razed his house to the ground, and how 
his wife and children had barely escaped with their lives. 

These foes he certainly would adequately requite for 
their misdeeds. Citizens, however, both old and young, 
would not be held accountable. 

In Italy the prevailing spirit of the troops enrolled by 
Cinna's orders was not far from mutiny. His attempt 
was to make a naval base (against Sulla) on the coast of 
Liburnia. Fleets were despatched to this coast by relays, 
but the crews promptly scattered and returned to their 



28 ANNALS OF CAESAR 

various homes. The result was that those who had not 
yet crossed became mutinous. It seemed all so futile. 
An incident fanned their suppressed rage into the flames 
of open revolt. A lictor of Cinna's beat a private soldier 
who was in his way. Then another soldier beat the lictor 
in turn : the arrest of this soldier was then ordered by 
Cinna. There arose a universal outcry of fury, and in a 
moment many swords slew the hated autocrat. 

83 

Early in the next year did Sulla leave Greece, twelve hun- 
dred transports (Plut., " Sulla," 27) landing his forces at 
Brundisium.i gy ^\^q letter of the law Sulla had no right 
to go on keeping his army : his imperium was concluded. 
On the other hand, his opponents, the consuls Norbanus 
and L. Cornel. Scipio, had a title quite defective at best, 
a title which Sulla would have been quite foolish to recog- 
nize or respect. Both " consuls " were Marians, and had 
been chosen through Papirius Carbo (cos. 84), the legatee 
of Cinna's residuary political estate. 

Norbanus, then, was defeated near Mount Tifata, a little 
east of the site of desolate Capua. Metellus Pius, who 
somehow had withdrawn to Liguria, joined Sulla with all 
the forces under his command. From his retirement in 
Spain came M. Licinius Crassus, and likewise attached 
himself to Sulla. As for the other consul, Scipio, Sulla 
contrived to gain the good-will of the consul's troops ^ : 
these finally ranged themselves under Sulla's eagles, and 
their commander was permitted to retire to Massilia. 
Thus Sulla, employing twenty cohorts of his own, gained 
forty new ones. In him indeed, as Carbo truly said, there 
dwelt both fox and lion. 

1 Plut. says from Dyrrachium ; Appian, 1, 79, says from Patrai. 

2 Plut. (" Sulla," 28) condemns the transaction : roh eavrov arparnbraL^^ 
•^crKyjixevoLS Trpbs diraTrfv Kai yorjTeiap ucrirep avrbs 6 i) y e /x d) v . And Still, 
in composing the Marius' "Vita," Plut. was influenced by the bitterness 
of Sulla's "Memoirs." 



POLITICAL RETROSPECT 29 



82 



Meanwhile young Marius had been made consul in the 
prevalent manner. Sulla then moving northward into the 
hill country of Signia (Segni), about thirty miles south- 
east of Rome, routed the eighty-five cohorts of Caesar's 
cousin, encouraged as he was by a dream ; and this he 
did when his troops were quite tired at the end of a day 
consumed in marching and skirmishing and road-building. 

Young Marius with fifteen thousand men fled into the 
rocky stronghold of Prseneste. Sulla now believed more 
than ever in his star, and told litigating parties to shift 
their bail-bonds to Rome. Young Pompey, twenty-three 
years old (son of Pompeius Strabo, cos. 88), now came 
to Sulla with a corps of three legions, organized and 
equipped by himself. This is the first appearance of 
Csesar's great rival on the larger stage of affairs. 

That generation praised the energy and close applica- 
tion of his military deportment, his endurance and bearing 
of hardships, his simple life and avoidance of current lux- 
uries, his need of sleep small beyond the needs of human 
nature. And even on his coach he planned improve- 
ments of things pertaining to the art of war. 

Sulla himself, while maintaining a close siege of Prse- 
neste, recovered Rome itself easily enough from his private 
enemies, for in that crisis private enmity and political par- 
tisanship were in a hundred ways and intricately bound 
up together. Neutrality was impossible, and many a man 
had become an adept in the histrionic art, posing now as 
partisan of the aristocracy and at another time as a well- 
wisher of the popular party. 

There followed a drawn battle with Carbo at Clusium 
(Chiusi), but soon that heir of Cinna was decisively de- 
feated at Faventia (Faenza, not far from Ravenna) and 
quit the soil of Italy. Even at his first entry into Rome, 
while his eagles gleamed in his camp on the field of Mars, 



30 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

Sulla alone passed within the gates (App., 1, 89) and con- 
fiscated all the property of his private enemies. Serto- 
rius, the best of all the Marians, had fled to Spain. 

But one great and black storm-cloud swept on from the 
south : the army of the coalition of Samnites and Luca- 
nians : seventy thousand men (it is said) under Pontius 
Telesinus the Samnite were they. Being too late to raise 
the siege of Prseneste, they swept on to Rome itself, the 
' lair of the wolves,' hoping to surprise the hated, capital. 

At the porta Collina ensued the desperate conflict, on 
November 1, the hardest won by far of all of Sulla's 
victories. 1 

Soon after, Sulla ordered that eight thousand Samnites, 
herded together, be speared to death. 

When the news reached Prseneste, Caesar's cousin, young 
Marius, abandoned hope and slew himself. His head was 
sent to Rome, where Sulla had it spiked before the rostra, 
sarcastically taunting the immaturity of his consular vic- 
tim : " One must first become an oarsman before handling 
the rudder." 

At Prseneste all senators captured there were executed, 
some at once, some later on. Of the common defenders, 
the Romans were pardoned, but the Prsenestians and the 
Samnites were speared to death. At last all Italy lay at 
Sulla's feet. To finish the work young Pompey was sent 
to Sicily and to Africa. 

The dullest Roman (Plut., "Sulla," 30) could under- 
stand that it was mainly a substitution of one autocrat 
for another : and whereas Marius was always the same, 
as for Sulla, our psychologist of Chseronea remarks, he 
was greatly changed for the worse by the achievement 
of supreme power: perhaps a revelation of underlying 
characteristics. 

1 Appian is clearly confused (1, 93), telling of a struggle lasting all 
night ; Velleius, 2, 27 : post primam demum horam noctis et Romana 
acies respiravit et hostium cessit. 



POLITICAL RETROSPECT 31 

Sulla stands out in Roman history as a conservative 
doctrinaire whose watchword was " Thorough ! " With 
a belief in his own star bordering upon superstition he 
coupled no moral ideals, no moral convictions whatever. 
Radical conservative as he was, in the consummation of 
his political victory he ceased to concern himself (as Dio, 
Fragm. of earlier books, 108, truly says) about the coop- 
eration of worthier men of his own class, and used crea- 
tures who could never say him nay. 

How large still loomed the name of Marius may be 
gathered from the fact that only after the death of young 
Marius (Veil., 2, 27) did Sulla assume the surname of 
Felix. All ancient historians agree that up to Nov. 1, 
82 B.C., Sulla maintained a^ certain moderation, but noAv 
he outdid Marius himself./ And still, I believe the relent- 
less doctrinaire conception of a kind of policy or states- 
manship was the underljdng motive of Sulla's destruction 
of the adherents of other parties or class interests : for 
these were well-nigh the same. Theory and policy, I say, 
for his natural temperament ^ was emotional and mobile : 
to pity he was readily moved. 

The demand for some definiteness as to who should be 
destroyed and who preserved had been made of Sulla in 
the senate by a younger aristocrat. Gains Metellus. Then 
came the lists : public lists, which have endowed the 
harmless term of Proscriptio with a sinister meaning for 
all time. The first list of eighty names was Sulla's per- 
sonal one. It must have contained whatever of the blood 
and race of Marius and Cinna could possibly be incul- 
pated. Next day one hundred twenty names were added, 
the following day a number not smaller ; in an address 
on the forum Sulla said that the names so far posted were 
those of persons whom he could remember : others would 
be added as their names occurred to him. For sheltering 
a fugitive, death was the penalty. Two talents were paid 

1 Plut., "Sulla," 30. Is there here perhaps a trace of Poseidonios ? 



32 ANNALS OF CESAR 

for a head of those proscribed. The children, too, were 
disfranchised, the very blood and ancestry made accursed 
in a measure. This was the most ruthless, perhaps, of all 
Sulla's acts, but it was consistent. Appian (1, 95) gives 
summaries of the proscriptions (which were similarly 
enacted in all cities of Italy): forty senators perished 
immediately ; of the equestrian class sixteen hundred 
men. 

As for the great Marius, Sulla did not permit even his 
ashes to remain in repose. The tomb situated on the 
Anio was opened by the dictator's command, and the 
ashes scattered in that river. (Cic, "Legg.," 2, 56.^ 

Whether young Csesar drew Sulla's attention more on 
account of his young wife or on account of his father's 
sister, who would determine ? 

Julia, it seems, had been even then born to Csesar. 
And now to the young Julius came a crisis,^ terrible 
enough in itself, awful then, and testing the youth in 
his nineteenth year as with fire. Sulla demanded that 
he put away his wife because she was Cinna's daughter. 
The stripling refused. Whatever the motives, this act 
revealed an uncommonly deep and an uncommonly strong 
character. For Pompey promptly heeded Sulla's request 
and divorced Antistia^ (Pint., "Pomp.," 9), accepting 
Sulla's stepdaughter ^Emilia instead. (So, too, M. Cal- 
purnius Piso promptly divorced Annia, the widow of 
Cinna.) Caesar lost his priesthood, his wife's dowry was 
confiscated and certain legacies (which had come to him 
from the Cinna or Marius connection) : one great result 
was "that he was held to belong to the other party." 
Should we not believe that this was his aim ? The polit- 
ical world noted the young aristocrat's partisan place. — 

1 Veil., 2, 41; Sueton., "C^s.," 1 ; Plut., "Cses.," 1. 

2 Plut. prob. got this from Oppius, who clearly (cf. Plut., "Pomp.," 
10) wrote his monograph on Csesar with continuous depreciation of Pom- 
pey whenever feasible. 



POLITICAL RETROSPECT 33 

He was troubled, too, with quartan fever ; every night, 
wandering in the Sabine Apennines, he changed his 
sleeping place. 

[The anecdote as given in Plutarch, "Cses.," 1, is full of difficulty: 
"When some said it was not reasonable to kill a youth of such tender 
years, Sulla said, they had no sense {vovs) if they did not perceive that 
many Mariuses were (contained) in that boy. And when this utterance 
reached young Caesar, then he fled and wandered in the Sabine moun- 
tains." Plutarch constructed the anecdote in a somewhat pragmatical 
way of his own. Clearly Suetonius, as to the facts, is much more precise 
and much more reliable than Plutarch. It was this way : Young Csesar 
received some formal amnesty or pardon from Sulla, after the youth had 
fled, when foremost members of the Roman aristocracy, such as his kins-- 
men Marcus ^milius and Aurelius Cotta, as well as the Vestal Virgins 
themselves, interceded in his behalf. And it was after this veritable siege 
(Suet.) that Sulla gave way and uttered the famous epigram (sive divini- 
tus sive aliqua coniectura) that many Mariuses were in Csesar, and some 
day the present recipient of their good-will wpuld destroy the very Opti- 
mates whom the petitioning friends of young Csesar had defended jointly 
with Sulla. Dio (43, 43) adduces a similar scene of intercession in con- 
nection with young Caesar's ostentatious neglect in the manner of wearing 
his toga.] 



CHAPTER III 

YOUNG CiESAR IN THE FIELD AND ON THE FORUM 

81 

Late in 82 (probably before Dec. 10, 82, as Botsford 
properly infers) the dictator Sulla, in his task of recasting 
the government, had stripped the tribunes no less than 
the popular assemblies of Rome of that power of initiative 
and independent legislation which had so greatly troubled 
the Optimates in the preceding half century. The popu- 
lar party for the time being was prostrate. Young Csesar, 
who had so emphatically and so conspicuously identified 
himself with that party, determined to go abroad and be- 
gin to make a name for himself in the field. He went to 
the jEgean to serve on the staff Qcontuhernio^ Suet. 2) of 
the praetor Minucius Thermus. Mitylene, the capital city 
of Lesbos, still held out, having first revolted against 
Rome in the terrible vendetta of 88 organized by Mithri- 
dates. A fleet was needed by Thermus to accomplish the 
investment of Mitylene, and so C^sar was despatched to 
Nikomedes of Bithynia, whose throne had been restored 
by Sulla. The fleet was sent. In all, Ctesar was sent to 
Nikomedes twice. Or did he go the second time on his 
own affairs ? 

[At this point we come upon the first traces of that furious bitterness 
which filled the partisan historiography of Rome substantially in the entire 
last century of the Rej)ublic, from Tiberius Gracchus to the Principate of 
Octavianus Csesar. The consular year of Csesar himself (58) saw, through 
his colleague Bibulus, the foulest charges made against him. (Cf. Suet., 
9.) The versified Annales of Tanusius Geminus began to appear during 
the Gallic war. The civil war greatly added to the ferocity of these attacks, 
in which, on the side of Caesar's enemies, T. Ampius Balbus and M. Ac- 
torius Naso were preeminent. Octavianus was very sensitive even about 

34 



YOUNG CiESAR IN FIELD AND ON FORUM 35 

the preservation of his adoptive father Caesar's youthful verse, which he 
eventually kept out of the ApoUinian and the other libraries. (Suet,, 56.) 
Now this second stay with Nikomedes gave rise to charges of the vilest 
kind, charges afterwards even openly uttered in political debate, even in 
published orations, as by the elder Curio, probably in that same consular 
year 58. (V. Suet., 49.) They were iterated and became current prop- 
erty, in a way comparable to certain charges of intemperance quoted of 
some of our public men in our civil war. The verse of the day, nay the 
marching songs of his own triumphant legions, cited the same charges. 

Even the first time he was sent to Bithynia he did not return promptly : 
he tarried unnecessarily, he loafed (desedit, cites Suet., 2): it is clear that 
we are dealing with a transcription by Suetonius. — This ulcer of pagan 
Greece was unfortunately no longer rare among the Romans, particularly 
of the corrupt aristocracy, in spite of the Lex Scantinia de nefanda Ve- 
nerea the date of which cannot be definitely established. Roman students 
of their own civilization, such as the annalist and statesman L. Piso Frugi, 
noted that the first official record of this evil in Rome occurred in the offi- 
cial acts of the censors Valerius Messala and Cassius Longinus, in the year 
154, or in the records which led up to the lustrum of that year.i The vain 
opposition which old Cato made to Greek culture for Romans becomes 
more luminous when we conceive of that period. As for our own seg- 
ment of Roman history, the deep connection of political decline with 
economic things, the interdependence of luxury and immorality and the 
relation of both to the coming subversal, was urged by Livy at the begin- 
ning of his recital of the civil war. To return to the date of our own 
relation. I must limit myself to saying that whenever the physical and 
mechanical circumstances rendered even possible such an imputation, it 
was regularly made. The mere verisimilitude of it belongs to the charac- 
teristic features of the later paganism of the classical world. In Csesar's 
favor must be stated the fact that in some plea for Bithynians, in Rome 
probably, when he was already powi(/ea; maximus, he referred to his rela- 
tions with Nikomedes in a frank and candid way as a reason for making 
this plea. He could hardly have done so with an evil conscience. (Gell., 
5, 13, 6.)] 

However, as to time : it was in 80 B.C. that Mitylene 
fell at last. (Liv., 89.) We note that Cinna's son-in- 
law did indeed serve on the staff of a Sallanian com- 
mander : no matter what the political trend of the period, 
young Csesar was an aspirant for public life ; this was the 
only avenue available at the time. Indeed, he thus gained 
the good word of influential men of the opposite party 

1 Plin., " N. H.," 17, 244. M. Messalge C. Cassi censorum lustro, a quo 
tempore pudicitiam subversam Piso gravis auctor prodidit. 



36 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

without joining that party at all. In the final storming 
of the Lesbian stronghold so conspicuous was the gallantry 
of the young staff-officer that the commander Thermus 
presented him with the citizen's crown (corona civica), 
the highest of such distinctions. While merely plaited of 
oak leaves, it outranked the corona muralis and vallaris, 
although these were of much greater material value. 
(Gellius, "N. A.," 5, 6.) At Lesbos the operations were 
concluded by the utter destruction of the rebellious town, 
without any regard for the names of Pittakos or of Al- 
kaios and Sappho. (Liv., 89.) Clearly the young man 
would not return to Sulla's Rome, but rather continue 
serving in the field. 

How Csesar spent the year 79 we know not. His next 
service was under P. Servilius, one of Sulla's clients, who 
had been consul in 79. His operations were in Lycia and 
Cilicia — a prelude, in effect, of Pompey's naval war eleven 
years later. But Ccesar had no intention of attending 
these campaigns to the end. For they lasted three years. 
That event which called Csesar home was the death of 
Sulla. 

781 

Clearly Cinna's son-in-law had gone away from his wife 
and little daughter Julia largely on account of Sulla. Now 
the dictator, whose power had been settled upon him with 
no limitation as to time, had in 79 resigned, quite from his 
own resolution or whim. In the next year, 78, he died 
in Campania, having but entered upon his sixtieth year. 
His voluntary retirement had greatly puzzled the political 
world, puzzled likewise the historians, such as Appian, 
who strove to understand his acts. Clearly he had held 
the greatest power, or sum of power, then known to the 
Mediterranean world. Had not more than one hundred 
thousand fighting men perished in the Italian wars he had 

1 Sallust's " Historise " began with that year. 



YOUNG CiESAR IN FIELD AND ON FORUM 37 

waged ? Who could tell the number of the kindred and 
connection of the notable men whom he had but recently 
deprived of life and fortune ? And still he stepped back 
into private life. So bold was he, so great his trust in 
his Fortune. Never had the multitude on the forum so 
stared at him as when he sent away lictors and axes, and, 
surrounded by a small band of personal friends, moved 
about freely and fearlessly as a private person.^ Fated, 
I say, he considered himself. But he sought felicity in 
the crude things of the flesh, — wine, actresses, and the 
like, carousings begun before evening had come.^ 

Apparently indifferent as to the opinion of his own 
generation, he was still deeply concerned about the judg- 
ment of history, and was writing the twenty-second book 
of his memoirs (Plut., 37) when the end came: a work 
naively self-laudatory and consistent in the effort to strip 
Marius of worth and merit. 

How futile are the political settlements achieved through 
blood and force and fear ! Hardly had Sulla closed his 
eyes when the very consuls of that year, Le^^idus and 
Catulus, quarrelled about his burial. But Lepidus was 
defeated here : too great and impressive was the prestige 
of Sulla's veterans, of whom some hundred and twenty 
thousand were said then to be in Italy. It is startling to 
see how quickly there was found an aristocrat who had 
become consul with Sulla's permission, an aristocrat who 
was impatiently eager to raise once more the banner of 
Marius and Cinna. 

Among the most essential things requisite for states- 
manship is a certain tact and delicate sense for determin- 
ing what is feasible, what in a given situation may be, 
should be, undertaken. If we ponder with care the terse 

1 When Caesar's opportunity came, some thirty-three years later, he 
did not imitate this dictator in this respect, as he did fairly not in any 
point or feature of the earlier autocrat's career. 

2 a<(> Tj/xipas, says Plut., "Sulla," 36, translating literally as often the 
Latin phrase before him, de die. 



38 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

data (in Suet., 3), we see that, even while abroad, young 
Csesar kept in touch with the course of affairs, with the 
plans of the populares at the capital. He knew of the 
political projects of Lepidus. These, and not the death 
of the autocrat only, induced him to return to the capital. 
But when he came and saw for himself, then (although 
but twenty-two years old) he decided to withhold ^ his 
active cooperation from this new agitation. Large had 
been the terms offered to Cinna's son-in-law and to the 
nephew of Julia, but neither did the personality of ^milius 
Lepidus appeal to him, nor did he consider the situation 
at all suitable. His wonderful equipoise of judgment, 
even at that stage of his life, was not to be deceived. 
Young Ctesar soon found other and better opportunities 
for injuring the dominant party in public opinion and 
commending himself to the populares. 

77 

The proconsul Cn. Dolabella had governed Macedon 
and had celebrated a triumph out of that province, as the 
Romans were wont to say. Him young Csesar prosecuted 
for extortion practised in the province (^Repetundarurri) in 
that specific perpetual court established in Sulla's system. 
For now the old jury system of Gains Gracchus was no 
more : the power of acquitting and declaring guilty had 
been by Sulla made an exclusive prerogative of the senate. 
It would have been a marvel, nay a miracle, if the young 
aspirant for political fame had secured a verdict from 
such a jury. Once more one class both ruled and judged 
alone, — the compromise of Livius Drusus (91 B.C.) had 
never been tried, — and the government was carried on 
by and for that one class. The speeches composed in 
connection with this case were elaborate : there were sev- 

1 Of course these things were not noted at the time. Caesar later on 
told them to his devoted followers, Balbus or Oppius, who set them down. 
So I interpret the slender tradition. 



YOUNG CiESAR IN FIELD AND ON FORUM 39 

eral actiones : ^ either Caesar merely published a second 
set of discourses dealing with the case (as Cicero did in 
his " Verrines " seven years later), or the presiding praetor 
granted a new trial. Quintilian (12, 6, 1) clearly refers 
in part to this state trial, commending the early maturity 
of the young pleader, and Suetonius claims (c. 55) that 
Caesar through this case at once attained eminence at the 
Roman bar. Encouragement certainly came to Caesar to 
pursue this line of public life by his prosecution of Gaius 
Antonius, Cicero's consular colleague fourteen years later. 
Antonius had obtained from Sulla ^ some squadrons of 
cavalry : perhaps to quarter them on people who refused 
to submit to extortion. " The Greeks who had been 
robbed (it was in Achaia) summoned Antonius to trial " 
before the praetor peregrinus, then Marcus Lucullus (a 
younger brother of the famous Lucius Lucullus). "The 
pleader for the Greeks was Gaius Caesar, even then still 
quite a young person " (^adulescentulus) . Lucullus gave 
a decree in accordance with the demands of the Greek 
complainants, whereupon Antonius appealed to the trib- 
unes of the people, making affidavit under oath that im- 
partial jurisdiction was denied him in that court. Was 
it due to the force and point of the young pleader ? Or 
was there some bias for the Greeks? The Luculli then 
were preeminent for Greek culture. ^ 

74 

Whatever the outcome, Caesar was not satisfied as yet 
with his forensic powers, and so determined to withdraw 
to Rhodes and devote himself for a while to further train- 
ing in oratory under the guidance of Apollonius. Cicero, 

1 The text was still extant in 160 a.d. : Gellius, 4, 16, 8, cites a passage. 

2 The whole case related by Asconius in Orationem in Toga Candida, 
p. 84, Orelli. — Kal too-oOtop taxvaev Coa-re rbv ^A.vt(S}vi.ov iiriKaXiaaffdai S??- 
fxdpxovs, Plut., "Caes.," 4. 

3 Suetonius passes this case over entirely. 



40 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

by the by, although six years older and wonderfully trained 
and always in training, undertook no political case what- 
ever until after the completion of his thirty-sixth year. 
The brilliant Arpinate himself, when returning from his 
eastern sojourn not long before, sought the instruction of 
the same eminent teacher. He credited Apollonius with 
three distinct forms of excellence. He was, says Cicero,^ 
an efficient pleader in actual and real cases, an eminent 
author, an expert teacher. Clearly a very eminent man, 
who, by the bye, repeatedly was sent to Rome by the Rho- 
dians on public affairs, for the government had clung to 
Rome in the Greek vendetta of 88 B.C. So eminent was 
this naturalized Rhodian that he was permitted to speak 
on the floor of the senate, using Greek, without the medi- 
ation of an interpreter. 2 And so in teaching, too, he 
required perfect mastery of Greek from his students.^ 
The Rhodian rhetor laid great stress on actual delivery 
and on practical declamation, and was at the very head 
of the so-called Rhodian school. 

Csesar undertook this voyage in the inclement season. 
He was not far from the end, when his ship was captured 
by Cilician corsairs near the island of Pharmakiissa, about 
eight miles southwest of Miletus. For nearly forty days 
he had to wait for the return of his friends and attendants, 
whom he had sent to the coast to raise ransom in his be- 
half. But his physician and two body-servants remained 
with him during this time. The ransom actually paid to 
the pirates was fifty talents. The outlaws had first placed 
hostages in Miletus for their good faith. But the Roman 
nobleman, barely freed, when he had reached the main- 
land, immediately, with almost fabulous energy, organized 
a fleet and overtook and captured many of the unsuspect- 
ing malefactors : it was all accomplished at night, says 

1 "Brutus," 316. 

2 Valer. Max., 2, 2, 3. 

3 Plut., " Cic," 4. 



YOUNG CiESAR IN FIELD AND ON FORUM 41 

Velleius. The captured pirates were imprisoned. Mean- 
while Caesar immediately set out to obtain from the Roman 
governor of 'Asia,' who then was in Bithynia, permission 
to have the freebooters executed. When the latter, Junius 
(Juncus?), said he would consider the matter (for there 
was much money to be made), Caesar returned and had 
them crucified on his own responsibility. 

[This curious adventure is related by Velleius, 2, 42, Plutarch, 2, and 
Suetonius, 4, most concisely by the latter. We see, then, that in the 
time of Tiberius, of Trajan, and of Hadrian there was available a bio- 
graphical book teeming with curious and exact detail. Also the version 
in Velleius and in Plutarch manifestly shows that this biographical book 
was essentially a eulogy : here there are emphasized the admirable quali- 
ties of extraordinary coolness and self-possession in the most trying and 
critical situations ; further, a wonderful capacity of swift determination 
and action ; and finally an independence of personal choice or whim, defy- 
ing even the highest authorities. The original book used by all three 
independently of one another was undoubtedly the book of Oppius, writ- 
ten or published immediately or very soon after Csesar's death, I believe. 
Plutarch blundered in the occasion, assigning it to Caesar's going out to 
serve under Minucius Thermus. Drumann (3, p. 136, note 10) correctly 
observes that Plutarch probably was confused by coming upon Bithynia 
in the relation. As for the name of the governor of the province of Asia, 
Plutarch calls him 'lovyKos. I have weighed the arguments of Nipperdey 
(" Philologus," 6, p. 377) for maintaining this reading, but am not at all 
convinced : it seems more rational to correct Plutarch by Velleius than 
Velleius by Plutarch. Plutarch often blundered in proper nouns in his 
transcriptions, — I mean non-Greek proper nouns. ] 

But the technique of oratory could not hold Caesar long 
at Rhodes. Why not? The activities of Mithridates were 
the reason. To go on studying rhetoric at such a time 
would have been, to the Roman consciousness, loafing.'^ 
So Caesar cut short his work under the professor Apollo- 
nius, crossed over to the mainland, gathered forces, drove 
from the province the commander of the king, and held to 
their allegiance to Rome such communities as were yield- 
ing or vacillating. It seems a great deal to achieve for a 

1 Ne desidere in discrimine sociorum videretur. Suet. , 4. 



42 ANNALS OF CESAR 

young man, and to undertake for one who had no man- 
date from Rome. Soon after he hastened back to Italy. 

73 

His mother's brother, M. Aurelius Cotta, consul in 74 
and proconsul of Gaul in the following year, had died in 
his province, and Csesar, about twenty-seven years of 
age, had been chosen pontifex in the place of his uncle. 
The social influence of the Aurelian gens was stronger 
than any remnants of political ill-will directed at the son- 
in-law of Cinna. — He knew that his fate would be terri- 
ble if he fell into the hands of the pirates. He therefore 
provided a vessel which had four rows of oars (which 
could be propelled faster than a trireme or bireme), and, 
attended (Veil., 2, 43) by two friends and ten slaves, 
crossed ^gean and Ionic and Adriatic seas back to Italy. 
Should he have met the pirates, — at one time they seemed 
to loom up on the horizon, — he was resolved not to fall 
into their hands alive. 



(As a rising politician C?esar believed that it was the best 
way not to affront any one, not merely to steer between 
men and partisans with cool neutrality. His policy was 
to make and hold friends and to please and serve the 
greatest possible number. His (Plut., 4) was the charm 
of a winsome personality. He excelled in the art — for 
it is an art — of doing favors and removing the possibility 
of friction : at the bottom of this must have lain the fac- 
ulty of discriminating between spirits and temperaments, 
— in a word, the power to conceive individual character 
keenly and correctly. He had the " faculty far beyond 
his time of life ^ of cultivating others," a pregnant sum- 
marization : he had the rare endowment, the genius^ to 
manage and manipulate and incidentally to increase the 

1 Hut., 4. depairevTiKbs Trap '^XiKlap. 



YOUNG CiESAR IN FIELD AND ON FORUM 43 

number of those on whose support he would soon begin 
to count. Early he knew the efficiency of lavish hospi- 
tality and of those culinary joys which in that age of 
Rome — the age of Lucullus, Catiline, Mapaurra — began 
to loom up very large in the first society of the imperial 
city. Here young Csesar was profuse and a splendid 
entertainer. His political adversaries, indeed, contem- 
plated this trait of the aspiring popularis politician with 
much satisfaction. They were quite sure that it was 
but a question of time, brief time, when he would be a 
ruined man, when bankruptcy, that unpardonable sin of 
the Roman code, would automatically drive him from the 
arena of public life. 



CHAPTER IV 

Cesar's public advancement before 63 b.c. 

His first appearance as a candidate for the suffrage of 
the Roman electorate was when he was chosen military 
tribune over Gains Popilius. (Plut., 5; Suet., 5.) The 
most attractive office for a younger politician, until Sulla 
became dictator, had been the office of trihunus plebis. 
Sulla had done his best to ruin it. He had ordained that 
these tribunes must hold no further office later on. Thus 
actually all those who aspired to a career, certainly those 
of the aristocracy, avoided this degraded and emasculated 
* honor.' Csesar did, even after the restoration of that 
office. And the legislative initiative also pruned away, 
what, indeed, was left ? 

Abroad, there was the Marian general Sertorius defy- 
ing the home government (78-72) in Spain. 

What Ci3esar did in 73-71 we know not. His biogra- 
phers and eulogists (Balbus, Oppius) do not seem to have 
set down anything for these years. We may, however, 
safely assume that he was far from doing nothing simply 
because he did nothing in public, nothing destined for 
publicity. Ever grew his knowledge of men, and we are 
compelled to add, of women, who often manage men ; ever 
grew his knowledge of men's strength or weakness, of 
their likes and dislikes. You cannot use those of whose 
more deeply graven characteristics you have no correct 
conception. His aspirations were high; faith in any re- 
pristination of Scipionic conditions of laws and govern- 
ment he had none ; such ideals the Greekling M. TuUius 
Cicero might pursue. We may assume that his plans and 
studies ever proceeded ; it is very unlikely that they moved 

44 



PUBLIC ADVANCEMENT BEFORE 63 B.C. 45 

by fits and starts, or that they were sometimes dormant, 
sometimes passionately pursued. 

71 

Even as a legate of Sulla, young Pompey had maintained 
a very large measure of personal and military indepen- 
dence. Even before he was a senator he had enjoyed a 
triumph out of Africa. The dictator had called him 
G-reat, although the will of Sulla revealed the testator's 
secret distrust and displeasure. Mandatary of an un- 
willing senate, Pompey had been intrusted with the task of 
wresting the Iberian peninsula from the Marian Sertorius. 
After a struggle of seven years, in which Pompey had 
invested all his personal fortune, Sertorius fell, not indeed 
through the strategy of Pompey, but by an assassin's 
dagger, his legate, Perpeima, desiring to supplant him. 
But the oligarchy in no wise desired to rear and raise a 
new leader of their own, who, supported by legions trained 
by himself alone, might reenact the role of Sulla. With 
the consent of the senators, indeed, there was to be no 
further autocrat, whether he appeared in the conservative 
interest or in any other. 

One of the great arguments for a thing considered evil 
by faction or party in the political affairs of men, is the 
precedent, the thing actually done and accomplished : and 
this is much more potent and potential than all the specu- 
lation and argumentation of the mere doctrinaire. 

In 74 B.c.,L. Lucullus, then consul, profoundly distrust- 
ful of the ambition and prestige of Magnus, had seen 
to it that proper funds were sent for Pompey's military 
chest, for Lucullus was full of apprehension that the 
young generalissimo, even w^ithout any mandate of the 
Great Council, might seize that prize of prizes, the new 
war to be waged with the king of Pontus. 

In 72 B.C., when Sertorius was murdered at Osca, in the 
foothills of the Pyrenees, his slayer, Perperna, had (Plut., 



46 ANNALS OF CESAR 

" Pomp.," 20) possessed himself of a peculiar and ill-boding 
inheritance, for among the papers of Sertorius were found 
letters, — private letters, — profoundly incriminating nota- 
ble men in Rome, men who desired to change the govern- 
ment, to have a revolution, if need be, and who, for this 
end, invited Sertorius to come to Italy with his army. 

Now Pompey, in aspiration and temperament, was con- 
servative ; he shrank from sedition and revolution, from 
any continuation or rekindling of civil wars, nay, of civil 
broils even. He therefore, with a kind of patriotic delib- 
eration, executed Perperna, who knew too much, and 
furthermore burned the incriminating letters without 
having read them. 



Meanwhile, nearer at home, southern Italy had been in 
the throes of a fearful convulsion, the slave war of Spar- 
tacus and Crixus. 

The rising of some seventy thousand bondsmen naturally 
meant a struggle unknown to the usages of international 
law : where quarter was not given. These slaves, among 
whom were many gladiators, had been victorious in no 
less than three great engagements. 

Finally Crixus (App., " B. C," 1, 117) perished near Mt. 
Garganus (coast of Apulia), and Spartacus abandoned his 
efforts to cut his way through northwards and reach the 
Alps. 

Still he dealt mighty blows to each consul in turn, and 
in Picenum he defeated them both with great disaster. 
Thence he moved to the extreme south, to Thurii, without 
being able to capture any of the great cities other than 
the port named. Here, we are told, he admitted importa- 
tion of arms only, and iron, and dealt not unfairly with 
merchants bringing such cargoes ; but gold he barred out. 

The military talents furnished by the ruling oligarchy 
were clearly incapable of extinguishing this conflagration 
which, at first, they had treated with scorn and contempt. 



PUBLIC ADVANCEMENT BEFORE 63 B.C. 47 

It was in this combination of circumstances that M. 
Licinius Crassus came into prominence. The Licinii were 
an Old Family in Rome. In his youth Crassus had long 
lived at his father's table amid frugal and simple surround- 
ings. Early in his career he became a speculator (Plut., 
" Crass.," 1) in Roman real estate. He had a kinswoman, 
Licinia, a Vestal Virgin. This lady possessed a splendid 
suburban villa, which Crassus strove to purchase at a 
small price ; and so incessant was his urging that the 
reputation of the vestal suffered from his endless visits, 
nay, was brought into court. This radical trait of covet- 
ousness (which some of our own folk would, no doubt, 
extol as "splendid business ability") dominated his soul 
and overshadowed many positive virtues. His rise to 
fabulous wealth became a stock subject of concern among 
his contemporaries. Before he issued forth to his catas- 
trophe in the Euphrates country (late in 55 B.C.), he 
made a survey of his fortune : he found that he was 
worth 7100 talents, having begun with a patrimony of 
300 talents. 

Out of the common subversal and distress of the Sulla 
period, he prospered, accepting free gifts from the dictator, 
no less than buying in precious properties at the auctions 
of the proscriptions, often at nominal figures. In confla- 
grations he regularly purchased such plots, as well as the 
adjacent real estate. Of building itself, however, he 
would have nothing (Plut., "Crass.," 2): he was a 
chronic bargain-hunter of houses built by others. Those 
fond of building, he was wont to say, accomplished their 
own ruin with abundant certainty, and needed no com- 
petitors in such folly. Further, he was an investor in 
silver mines ; but it was as a slave-trader that he par- 
ticularly excelled. Slaves he furnished for every form of 
labor or craft, personally attending to their teaching and 
training. His saying, that a really rich man must be able 
to organize and keep an army — keep it, mind you, from 



48 ANNALS OF CAESAR 

his income — is familiar ; also it is full of meaning in that 
particular period of the political history of Rome. (Cic, 
" Off.," 1, 125.) Though as Plutarch sagaciously observes, 
that is not a sound saying : for the voracious potentiality 
of war is quite indefinite, and, indeed, infinite. "War 
feeds not on fixed portions," said the Spartan Archidamos. 
— To his friends Crassus loaned freely without interest, 
but was inexorably rigid in calling for his capital when it 
fell due. An earnest and industrious advocate was he, also, 
shrinking from no case; a devoted wooer of the goodwill 
of the humblest citizens, striving to be able to name them 
all whenever he met them. After the return of Marius 
(December, 87), and in that reign of terror, his father per- 
ished, but he made good his escape to Spain, where his 
father once had governed, and where he himself had many 
friends. Here he abode a long time in a cave on the 
coast, curiously dependent upon the bounty and goodwill 
of a Roman resident. ^ 

To sum up : Crassus with unvarying devotion pursued 
wealth : A very " successful " man in the calendar of plu- 
tocratic saints, and not very scrupulous in the cult. But 
apart from this he, too, was quite sure that the political 
fabric of Rome was like a ship whose seams are beginning 
to yield; he, too, was wide-awake in anticipating and, as 
it seems, later on accelerating a situation breeding a crisis 
where resolute ambition might blaze the way to monarchy. 
> To Crassus, then, the home government in 71 gave the 
mandate to conclude the slave war. Gauls they were, 
and Germans (says Livy, 97). The new commander 
went south, having enlisted six new legions. He was 
veritably a volunteer in undertaking this desperate cam- 
paign. Having arrived on the theatre of operations, he 
decimated the two legions awaiting him there. ^ At all 

1 Plut., 5 fin., follows the antiquarian Fenestella (51 B.C.-19 a.d.). 

2 Though here the authorities differ, as Appian, "B. C," 1, 118, inti- 
mates. 



PUBLIC ADVANCEMENT BEFORE 63 B.C. 49 

events, he restored the stern discipline of Roman tradition. 
He operated with consummate energy and defeated the 
famous gladiator, though Spartacus personally escaped 
and kept troubling the camp of the Romans. 

At this point, Pompey arrived from Spain and was 
given authority to share in the conclusion of the cam- 
paign. So Spartacus, with the energy born of despair, 
broke through the circumvallations of Crassus,i late in 
the autumn. At first he made Brundisium his objective 
point, but soon turned on Crassus. In that struggle the 
famous slave himself perished, and his corpse was never 
discovered. Six thousand captives were crucified on the 
road between Capua and Rome, a Roman ending of it all. 

Here, then, there were two dynasts, two rival politicians 
also, both from the political household of Sulla, but jealous 
of each other, whose political ex23erience could not well 
have inculcated any lesson of patriotism in that day and 
in that world. To make the situation more acute, they 
were elected consuls for the next year. 

Pompey, then, was a mere Roman knight who had never 
sat down in the senate yet, a man of arms accustomed to 
have his own way, but not a new Sulla ; in a way no poli- 
tician at all, and, therefore, ill at ease among them, and 
needing politicians of his own. In his unwillingness to 
submit to the oligarchy, he soon revealed his willingness 
to undo much of the work of Sulla. Pompey received a 
triumph out of Spain, but Crassus had to be content with 
the second-rate glory of an ovatio.^ In this connection, 
however, the eminent financier displayed quite conspicu- 
ously his personal ambition, for he rendered a great sacri- 
fice to Hercules for his defeat of the brawny men from 
Gaul and Germany, and combined therewith a feasting of 

1 Viz., across the neck of the peninsula of Rhegium, some thirty- five 
miles in length. Plut., " Cr.," 10. 

2piut., "Cr.," 11, transliterates ovationem as 6ovav: is this another 
mark of hurried transcription ? 



50 ANNALS OF CAESAR 

the common people at ten thousand tables. Also, he had 
measured out to them food for three months. It was not 
for sentiment that he did anything ; he was an investor ; 
this bounty, too, was meant to be an investment, the politi- 
cal fruits, or income, from which he confidently expected to 
gather at some future time. He desired in this way, if he 
could, to balance the prestige of the perpetual commander. 

70 

This year (in which Csesar completed his thirtieth year) 
makes a deep incision in the political history of the impe- 
rial commonwealth. First, there was the unique circum- 
stance that consular colleagues were the two men who, 
among their fellows then, were marked as aspirants for 
greater power and as rivals. Remarkable, further, was 
this, that a man became consul exclusively in consequence 
of military prestige, a man who, as we observed above, had 
never sat in the senate, nor spoken there ; and still, so 
mighty was that commander, that Crassus (Plut., "Pomp.," 
22) had not dared to be a candidate for the consular honor 
before he had begged Pompey's permission. Politicians, 
as we see every day here in our American Commonwealth, 
have to practise continually many forms of humiliation, or 
self -suppression, and endless are the forms of lowly things 
to which they are forced to stoop in their striving for \ 
power. Both men had still kept their legions together : 
if the senators had seriously opposed their candidacy it 
would have been a vain endeavor. But these things were 
not in consonance with the republican forms of the state. 
For the men of the toga and curia it was a somewhat 
anxious time.^ 

After the inauguration, however, and the customary 
solemnities of Capitoline ritual, it was quite manifest that 
the new consuls chimed but ill together. In the senate 

lAppian, "B. C," 1, 121; Plut., "Pomp.," 21. (Zonaras, 10, 2, 
copies Plut. almost verbally.) 



PUBLIC ADVANCEMENT BEFORE 63 B.C. 51 

Crassus was influential : clearly Pompey was not : but his 
' dipiitas,' his public position, was to him the first thing in 
the scale of all his valuations. As for the prestige which 
the commander had brought into the curia, the oligarchy 
of the Great Council were not interested in nourishing 
and fostering it. Thus, then, both from deep pride and 
the constraint of circumstances (the forces within and 
without), Pompey was driven to seek support with the 
plebs and with its leaders. And they had at heart, above 
all other things in their political world, the restoration of 
the full and real power formerly inherent in the tribunes 
of the people. 1 Would Pompey accomplish that? The de- 
tails somehow escape us. Cicero, however ("Verrin.," 1, 
44-45), not more than ten months or so afterwards, wrote 
that Pompey virtually pledged himself to the people, to 
the plebs, in a popular address (^contio) which he delivered 
outside of the walls as consul-elect. And further, in this 
restoration of the Tribunician legislation, Pompey, as pre- 
siding consul, had the senate debate, had made a relatio of 
it. 2 It certainly went through by adoption of the Comitia 
Centuriata : for there was then no other avenue of enact- 
ment. Clearly the senate was not in a strong position to 
block this restoration. 

[Cicero in his maturity ("Legg.," 3, 19-22) on the whole reprobated 
the legislative privilege of the trib. pi. He, in his life history, had some 
reason. Think of Clodius. In the passage cited he expresses his profuse 
admiration for Pompey, excepting this one matter: de tribunicia potestate 
taceo : ' I am not inclined to censure it, and praise it I cannot.' But ac- 
tually Cicero held it was better that the plebs should have leaders : better , 
that there be a visible and, to a fair degree, a responsible head for the • 
plebs : the merely inarticulate seething and boiling emotions of the masses 
were apt to calm and cool, when there was such an actual and palpable 
leader.] 

But to return to this portentous year 70. There is 
little doubt but that the restoration of the legislative 

1 Plutarch, whose political concern is always subordinated to his moral 
and psychological interest, barely touches upon this great subject. 
2Botsford, "Assembl.," p. 425 sq. 



52 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

power of that order would have come, or come about, any- 
how. Whoever fathered or furthered it was quite sure 
to lay up for himself, and for his further public career, a 
goodly share of what the Romans called gratia popularis. 
So shortlived was the work of Sulla, however enduring 
the infamy of his measures. 

Closely bound up with this restoration was the other 
incisive change wrought in the same year. The great 
state trial of Verres, and the setting forth of his three 
years' spoliation of Sicily, engaged public attention in 
August. On August 5 Cicero pleaded against that male- 
factor of great spoils, at a time when the SuUanian mo- 
nopoly of senatorial juries was still in force. The case of 
Verres itself had much to do with the reform of the courts 
of justice. Something of the compromise once proposed 
by M. Livius Drusus in 91 was now enacted in the bill 
drawn by L. Aurelius Cotta (an uncle of Csesar's), him- 
self a presiding justice (preetor) in this year. Hencefor- 
ward all juries were to be composed of three elements in 
equal allotments : one third were to be senators, one third 
knights, one third tribuni cerarii.^ It seems that the last- 
named class had a property rating not much below the 
equestrian. Thereafter every year a regular panel (indi- 
ces lecti') was drawn by the supreme annual dignitary of 
the Roman bench, viz., by the prcetor urhanus : it was a 
prima facie evidence of civil excellence so to be chosen. 



What of Caesar in this important year ? ^ But of the 
restoration of the power of the tribunes, Suet., 5, says : 
(" adores ^ (auctores ?) restituendge tribuniciae potestatis 

1 On these v. Botsford, " Assembl.," p. 64, n. 3. 

2 Dnimann makes too much of the fact that Aurelius Cotta was an 
uncle of Csesar's. 

s There are various reasons for reading auctores. Probably some of 
the trib. pi. are meant, such as M. Lollius Palicanus, who enlisted Pom- 
pey's support. 



PUBLIC ADVANCEMENT BEFORE 63 B.C. 53 

cuius vim Sulla deminuerat, enixissime iuvit ") ' he as- 
sisted with supreme effort the men engaged in putting 
through the restoration of the power of tribunes, the force 
of which Sulla had cut short.' 

Also Csesar was active for a plebiscitum (rogatio Plotid) 
which permitted partisans of Lepidus, who (in 78-77 B.C.) 
had fled to Sertorius in Spain, to return and to resume 
their civic rights. Amongst these exiles was his wife's 
brother. The speech which Cinna's son-in-law then held ^ 
was a contio : Csesar perhaps for the first time addressed 
the plebs from the rostra on the forum, speaking probably 
through introduction and permission given by the tribune 
Plotius, whose name this rogatio bore. To infer that the 
matter never passed beyond the rogatio stage would be rash. 

This year 70 B.C. in many ways marks the humiliation 
of the oligarchy. The better we become acquainted with 
it, the less do we, as students of Roman history, feel in- 
clined to simply appropriate (with Cicero) the political 
principle of senatorial primacy in the current adminis- 
tration of city and of empire as the ideal form or as an 
unmixed blessing. There were censors then, Cornelius 
Scipio Lentulus and L. Gellius. They struck from the 
roster of the senate (Liv., 98) not less than sixty-four 
members of the Great Council.^ 

In the ' survey of knights ' Pompey himself appeared, 
leading his horse, in a somewhat spectacular manner, 
which added to his prestige of a personal power ; parades 
were dear to the Roman spirit. 

The senate certainly, as the quasi-exclusive holder of 
power and privilege in Rome, at the end of 70 B.C. was 
a pretty sorry spectacle. 



■^ Caesar prepared it with literary care : it seems to have been immedi- 
ately published. It existed still in the time of Gellius, 13, 3. 

2 " Wohl zum Teil solche die durch Sulla begtinstigt hineingeschliipft 
waren." Madvig, " Verf assung, " etc., 1, 410. 



54 ANNALS OF CESAR 



Coesar enters the Senate 



\ In 68,^ on January 1, Ccesar began his cursus honorum 
as quaestor, i.e., as one of the commissioners of the treas- 
ury, in the larger aspect of their operations, mandataries 
of the Great Council, in which by the fact of their elec- 
tion they received membership. In this first official year 
of his life, although the qusestorship belonged to the minor 
magistracies, Caesar at once availed himself of an oppor- 
tunity to remind the Roman people as to where he stood 
in public life, remind them that he was a nephew of 
Julia, wife of Marius, that he was a son-in-law of Cor- 
nelius Cinna. Both his aunt Julia and his wife Cornelia 
died in this year. So Ciesar delivered eulogies in honor of 
both, as was customary, on the forum. He seems to have 
prepared these addresses to be available for publication. 
Suetonius, at least (c. 6), in the time of Hadrian, was 
able to cite from one of them. We at once realize the 
comparative impotence of the oligarchy to check or in- 
timidate him, or to cause him discomfiture later on. In- 
deed, after we have resolved to have the political events 
of 70 B.C. settle well in our understanding, we are far 
from being astonished at that which, looked at by itself 
alone, might impress us as marvelous audacity. He dared 
(says Pint., "Cses.," 5) to exhibit images of Marius at 
the funeral of the latter's widow, ignoring the fact that, 
some thirteen or fourteen years before, the very name of 
the great plebeian had been officially accursed. And the 
common people received this sensational manifesto with 
shouts of approval and clapping of hands. 

After a while he married a very young lady of the aris- 
tocracy, Pompeia, a granddaughter, through her mother, 
of Sulla. At the end of his year in the treasury, the lot 
sent him, attached to the quaestor Antistius Vetus, to 
Further Spain, a province to be important in his further 
1 Drumann computes 68, Fischer 67 b.c. 



PUBLIC ADVANCEMENT BEFORE 63 B.C. 55 

and latter career. His superior, the governor Vetus, as- 
signed to him the task of holding court, and so, passing on 
in his circuit, he came to the old Phenician port of Grades 
(Cadiz). Suetonius was a Roman of the old order, a pro- 
found believer in dreams and portents. So he assigns to 
this first sojourn in Gades (a veritable Finisterre^ too, to ' 
the Mediterranean consciousness) the occurrence of a 
dream, 1 a vision of embracing his own mother : but the 
interpreters of dreams (^conieetores') told him that his 
mother meant the Earth, which was destined to become 
subject to him. 

Such anecdotes always abound when a man has risen 
to towering eminence. The other anecdote of Gades is 
somewhat absurd and shows that, no matter how pains- 
taking an antiquarian and grammaticus Suetonius was, 
still he was not competent to weigh the nicer things, the 
imponderahilia of history. We are told, then, that when 
Csesar, near the Phenician temple of Melkart (Hercules) 
in Gades, beheld a statue of Alexander, he felt a pang of 
profound disgust with himself ; for he realized then that 
he had now (at thirty-three) reached the same age which 
the Macedonian had attained when he had accomplished 
the conquest of the Eastern world. So the scion of 
iEneas and Venus Genetrix heaved a deep sigh and — 
promptly requested of his superior his discharge, so that 
he might go to Rome and make some beginning of an 
Alexandrian career. What nonsense ! 

[Particularly absurd is the phrase quasi pertcesus ignaviam suam (as 
though utterly disgusted with his own lack of energy). We may rather 
be absolutely convinced that the deep ambition and the preternatural and 
almost uncanny sagacity of this extraordinary politician did not allow any 
grass to grow under his feet. Perhaps a Greek rhetor or grammaticus 
invented this anecdote. Plutarch puts the Alexander matter in Caesar's 
later sojourn in Spain, when he governed in Further Spain as proprcetor. 
There, having some leisure (sic) , he read something of Alexander's achieve- 

1 Dio, too, 37, 52, fixes such a dream as occurring in Gades in connec- 
tion with Csesar' s quaestorship. 



56 ANNALS OF CESAR 

ments, and after a long period of silent and deep reflection, tears (Plut., 
"Cses.," 11) began to course down his cheeks; and when his friends 
wondered, he said: " Do you not think it is worthy of grieving if Alex- 
ander, being of such an age (as I am now), was king over so many beings, 
and I have achieved nothing brilliant as yet ? " — But, putting everything 
aside, a certain trait of Csesar stands out in the tradition of antiquity : 
he w^as charming and rarely winsome in his own circle. His friends wor- 
shipped him when he had become eminent, not, however, for his achieved 
eminence ; for this never wins the hearts of men. No, in him there was 
a blending of traits and qualities which held the loyalty and deeper affec- 
tion of his inner circle (Hirtius, Balbus, Matius, Oppius, Pollio) in a rare 
and unique manner. Among these friends, who indeed were more or less 
dependents also, Cfesar seems to have conversed with great unrestraint. 
Many a personal anecdote thus was heard by Balbus and Oppius and 
others. But exact notation and precise assignment to a particular point 
in his career — tliis was quite another matter: perhaps it was not even 
intended by Caesar. And as for his friends, such precision, after his 
death, proved quite impossible.] 

But to return to our annals i^ " Withdrawing, therefore, 
before the time (i.e. when the imperium of his superior, 
Vetus, expired), he visited Latin colonies which were in 
unrest about seeking the Roman franchise, and he would 
have stirred them up to some act of daring, had not the 
consuls, for this very reason, for a short period kept (there) 
the legions which had been enrolled for the purpose of serv- 
ing in Cilicia."2 An unfriendly note : for Caesar is charged 
with the intention of doing something disturbing peace. 

6T 

Now there was, indeed, at this time an unrest and agita- 
tion among the communities beyond the Po, such, e.g., as 
Cremona, Verona, Comum, Mediolanum. These sought 
equality with the ' allies ' further south, who had, as we 
have seen, received the franchise in 89-88. 

To these districts Pompey's father, Strabo, had given 
the lus Latii,^ i.e., that who held a local office would thus 

iSuet., "C," 8. 

2 App., " Bell. Mithr.," 94. (rvv^-jre/x^av {scil. the Romans) 5^ Kal rapit 
acpQv (TTpaTov Tro\i>v i k k ar a\ dy o v. 

3 Asconius, p. 3, Orelli. 



PUBLIC ADVANCEMENT BEFORE 63 B.C. 57 

step into full Roman franchise. Now Caesar, both then 
and ever afterwards, always constituted himself a kind 
of patron and defender of these subalpine communi- 
ties. There, indeed, as it proved and had proved before, 
was the very latchkey of the entire peninsula. Should 
we go so far, however, as to infer that even then Csesar 
held in his restless brain a deep-laid scheme to begin to 
secure that gate against the contingencies of future 
actions ? 

Service in Cilicia, Suetonius said : this points to the 
Pirate-war of 67. This war was due to a crying ne- 
cessity : still, it was organized and specially designed 
to give to Pompey a command even more extraordi- 
nary and vast than the quite extraordinary ones of 
the past which had made him famous. But the actual 
campaign, too, proved quite extraordinary, because it was 
concluded in three months. The conservatives in the 
senate were disgusted. For this vast power had been 
given to the perpetual commander through a plebisci- 
tum. Incidentally, we learn that the three resources 
for the grain supply of Rome were the three provinces 
of Africa, Sicily, and Sardinia. (" De Imper. Cn. Pom- 
pei," 34.) 

Appian says ("Mithr.," 92) that the Pontic sovereign 
personally had stimulated the depredations of the pirates. 
The rocky coast line of Western Cilicia afforded them a 
great abundance of lairs, magazines, starting-points for 
their operations. This was the reason that, collectively, 
they were generally dubbed Cilicians. Associated with 
them were bands from Pontus and Syria, from Cyprus 
and Pamphylia, flocking to the sea, as Lucullus and the 
legions of Rome had been more and more gaining control 
of terra firma. 

Rome had begun to suffer severely, as the price of grain 
had gradually risen to starvation figures. The very 
coasts of Italy had become insecure. 



58 ANNALS OF CiESAR 

Not the senate, I said above, gave to Pompey this 
extraordinary command, but a plebiscitum proposed by 
the tribune Gabinius : Pompey himself reaped the fruits, 
sweet and juicy, of the restoration of the power of trib- 
unes, of 70 B.C. This command was to be for three years. 
To his military chest were assigned six thousand talents 
Attic ; subject to his sway was to be the Mediterranean 
from end to end, with two hundred seventy war galleys, 
a hundred and twenty thousand infantry (a curious speci- 
fication looking more to the continuation of war on the 
mainland, accomplished a little later on), and twenty-five 
lieutenants. Among these were Tib. Nero, Terentius 
Varro, L. Sisenna, L. Lollius, Metellus Nepos, with spe- 
cific assignments of coast line. The Cilicians proper, who 
were rounded up last of all, on the whole preferred sub- 
mission to a genuine test of strength or lengthy blockade 
or siege. 

They had to surrender not only themselves but supplies 
and ships, both those on the stocks and those floating on 
their own keels : further, great stores of copper and iron, 
canvas, cables, timber, and — captives. Of these there 
were two kinds : those held for toil and those held for 
ransom. All these were sent home. There many of them 
found their own names engraved on cenotaphs, as dead to 
their dear ones. 

The name of Pompey had not been written in the bill, 
but its provisions had been adapted for the One alone. 
The senate, indeed (Dio, 36, 6-7), would willingly have 
gone on letting the world suffer from the evils and 
troubles of the corsairs rather than bestow so vast a 
power upon one person. Gabinius was almost slain in 
open senate. To emphasize my point : the democratic 
politicians actively promoted these vast commands, while 
the oligarchy abominated them. Csesar probably was still 
in Spain then, but we may rest assured that his sympa- 
thies and support were actively enlisted in the policy of 



PUBLIC ADVANCEMENT BEFORE 63 B.C. 59 

vast provincial power. His own imperium was bound to 
come in the cursus honorum. 



Returned to Rome and to his young consort Pompeia, 
Caesar resumed his policy of lavish entertaining. Before 
he received any office at all (Pint., "C^es.," 5) his debts 
amounted to thirteen hundred talents. He was appointed 
curator of the Appian Way ; in this service he expended 
greater sums than those allowed him from the treasury, 
paying the excess out of his own pocket. In the next 
year 

Csesar and Bibulus were chosen sediles. In this year, too, 
Pompey succeeded to Lucullus, receiving that bottomless 
source of profit and power, the continuation of the cam- 
paigns against Mithridates. 

This plehiscitum Manilianum was another heavy blow 
of the Only One against the senatorial oligarchy ; also it 
appeared to cool observers decidedly more as a palpable 
job, because the war was virtually over : its definite ter- 
mination could not be far away. Dio Cassius (36, 42) 
expressly names Csesar and Cicero as those who wrought 
upon the plebs to accept this measure. 

[Here, then, we come upon the imperial historian Dio, and deal hence- 
forward with a pen and purpose more personally acute, let me say, than 
the transcriptions of Appian or than the psychological and moralizing 
electivism of Plutarch.] 

J^' For these " (Cicero and C?esar) " cooperated with them, 
not because they also were convinced that it was advan- 
tageous to the commonwealth, nor because they wished to 
gratify Pompey personally, but inasmuch as it was bound 
to come to pass anyhow, Cgesar at once cultivated the 
plebeians because he perceived how much more powerful 
than the senate they were, and made preparation that 



60 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

something similar should some day be voted for himself, 
and therein to render Pompey more envied and more odi- 
ous in consequence of the grants made to him ; Cicero, 
on his side, a man without a pedigree and a hard-work- 
ing and brilliant pleader — then prtetor-elect — deemed 
it the proper thing to enter upon a public career,^ and 
he was engaged in making a demonstration, both to the 
plebs and to the oligarchy, that whichever of the two he 
would attach himself, he would decisively enhance their 
interest." 

Is the pen of Livy behind the voice of Dio ? Clearly 
Caesar desired to widen the breach between Pompey and 
the senate as much as possible. 

- But to return to the JEdile-elect^ Caesar. January 1 was 
the regular date of inauguration. But in the last days of 
the expiring year QQ^ a few days before entering upon this 
' honor' (Suet., 9), there fell upon his name the shadow of 
a very serious suspicion or imputation. As consuls for %b 
there had originally been elected P. Cornelius Sulla and 
P. Autronius Psetus. But these politicians had been found 
guilty of corrupt practices (^amhitus)^ being prosecuted 
by their competitors, and under the law these latter were 
made consuls in their stead. The guilty men, not dis- 
credited merely, but suffering from enormous expendi- 
tures, with ruin staring them in the face, now entered 
upon a conspiracy 2 to seize the government by a coup 
d'etat^ i.e., by a sudden display of force, and trust their 
fortunes to the pregnant lap of the goddess Futurity. 
Embraced in their programme, however, was a dictator- 
ship for Crassus, with Caesar as his Master of the 
Horse. 

1 T7]v TToXiTelav dyeiv -^^iov, Dio, ib. This historian is personally severe 
towards Cicero, as he is later on towards Seneca, resolute in declining 
to be swayed by any cultural eminence of certain men in public 
life. 

2 The ancient tradition is reviewed with great care in a recent mono- 
graph by Professor 11. B. Nutting, of the University of California. 



PUBLIC ADVANCEMENT BEFORE 63 B.C. 61 

[We may observe that Suetonius, in questions of literary authority or 
evidence, can be quite critical : here he passes entirely the two most con- 
venient writers, convenient to the grammaticus, viz., Sallust ("Historise" 
and "Cat.") and Livy : he cites instead contemporary proofs or allega- 
tions, viz., Tanusius Geminus, the Edicts of Bibulus of 69 b.c, C. Curio 
the elder in Orations. J 

"This, too, viz., this conspiracy, Cicero seems to refer 
to, relating in a certain letter to Axius " (a man of the 
bankers' class and a friend of Varro's also) '* that Caesar 
in his consulate had definitely established the autocratic 
power which as sedile he had planned : that Crassus, 
from remorse or fear, had not kept the date fixed for the 
slaughter (i.e.^ of the consuls legally inducted, i.e.^ prob- 
ably January 1, 65}, and that therefore Caesar had not 
given the signal which had been agreed upon : " that the 
matter had then been postponed to a later date, because 
Catiline, who meanwhile, it seems, was admitted as an 
accomplice, was premature in giving the signal. — We 
must not thresh over what might have been, nor dwell on 
the flimsy wall that stood between the quiet course of the 
constitutional government and the chronic potentiality of 
revolution : we content ourselves here with a simple but 
impressive observation. Crassus, politically influential 
among his aristocratic confreres and personally the most 
eminent representative of property, this Crassus definitely 
and secretly leagued with Csesar, the latter then politi- 
cally hated and distrusted by his aristocratic confreres, 
and far from being a representative of the classes of prop- 
erty, because his debts then exceeded greatly a million in 
gold in our standard of money ; — it is a puzzle ; but in 
public life, with Pompey in Asia, these two probably 
were the most influential men of the day ; be we ever so 
sceptical as to the charges later made, clearly Caesar and 
Crassus were in a receptive frame : receptive to be at the 
head of affairs if a revolution were attempted, or to step 
into supreme power through a revolution. But the pear 
was not yet ripe. 



62 ANNALS OF CESAR 



65 



r^ Caesar's sedileship came in his thirty-fifth to thirty-sixth 
year. Let us note the public acts of the aspiring politi- 
cian. As aedile, Csesar produced three hundred twenty 
pairs of gladiators : he " washed away," as Plutarch (c. 5) 
aptly puts it, the memory of the measure of the utmost 
gratifications furnished to the Roman people by his prede- 
cessors. The Roman and Megalensian games were cele- 
brated with a splendor unheard of. His father's memory 
was also brought into play so as to add to the oppor- 
tunities of the prescribed shows. Some of these expendi- 
tures were undertaken jointly with his colleague Bibulus ; 
but the cream of popularity was somehow skimmed for 
himself by Julius. It was like the temple of the Dioscuri 
on the forum, formally, indeed, the temple of Castor and 
Pollux, but public usage limited itself to the former name. 
So Bibulus bitterly jested about himself.^ But apart from 
this investment for the future, Caesar would not omit the 
opportunity, even more plainly than before, of appearing 
as the political heir of Marius and of Cinna. So, one 
morning the Romans discovered (Plut. 6) that, overnight, 
statues of Marius, with attendant geniuses of victory, had 
been quietly placed on the capitol, blazing in gilded 
surface : and the inscriptions recalled the Cimbrian and 
Teutonic achievements. For great was still the name of 
Maiius, and there survived veterans from whose deepest 
feelings welled up tears of joy. While the oligarchy im- 
precated the deed, and talked of Caesar as of one who was 
plotting for a throne, the Marians, surging in the open 
spaces amid the great temples on that august hill, dis- 
covered how numerous they really were, and cheered one 
another. The aspiring politician scored again. He de- 

1 Dio, 37, 8, seems to have transcribed from Suet., 10, directly: "Ut 
communiura quoque inpensarum solus gratiam caperet": wo-re koL t^v 
iir iKcivois 86^av (7(f>€T€pL<raa-dai. 



PUBLIC ADVANCEMENT BEFORE 63 B.C. 63 

served his kinship with Marius, they said. This incident 
of defiance resulted in a special session of the senate. 

The oligarchy was astounded. Old Lutatius Catulus, 
leader of the senate, voiced their common sentiment: "No 
longer with mines, but with battering-rams and catapults 
and ballists is Csesar grasping the government." But the 
sedile was neither timid nor dumb: so adroitly did he make 
rejoinder to these insinuations and satisfied the Great 
Council. What man, indeed, then in public life, surviving 
from Sulla's generation, or which one now pressing to the 
front, could rival the aedile as undoubted leader of the 'po'p- 
ularis party ? We know nothing further of Caesar's self- 
defence in that senate, nor was his positive eloquence, 
often attested since his prosecution of Dolabella, then a 
new thing. One incisive trait he had, and we discover it 
everywhere in his writings and in the further acts of his 
public career : viz., a wonderful faculty of putting his ad- 
versaries in the wrong ; so to present a given situation as to 
have equity and good sense bound up with his position and 
with his measures, while intemperateness and heat, and all 
things unreasonable and indefensible, appeared as lodged 
with his adversaries. Just then his chief aim was to dis- 
credit and to humiliate the oligarchy. Neither at home, 
indeed, nor abroad, were they, in Q^ B.C., favored by the 
trend of public affairs. 

64 

In this year Pompey abandoned the pursuit of the 
ruined Pontic tyrant in the direction of the Crimea, and 
turned southward. A certain charm and romantic vision 
possessed his soul to push on and add the unknown to the 
Empire.! In Africa, in his youthful manhood, he had 
advanced to the tides of the Atlantic, and now, moving 
through Syria, he hoped to arrive at the Persian Gulf, 
and reach that margin where, to the poets of old, flowed 

1 Plut. , ' ' Pomp., "38. From Theophanes ? 



64 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

the deep circular currents of Okeanos. Clearly he be- 
longed to the class which, after Cortez, Pizarro, and 
De Soto, we often call the conquistador es. He had come 
near to the Caspian. Syria, then (Plut.), had no longer 
any genuine or legitimate monarch. So Pompey designed 
it a province and property of Rome. Lebanon he trav- 
ersed, and subdued the fierce and warlike archers who 
dwelled there, the Ityrcei (Druses). 

( In this year, Cicero was a candidate for the consulate, 
and was actually elected, too, new man though he was. 
Whose candidate was he ? Per se, by no means that of 
the oligarchy. For, to cite but two things : nothing for 
a long time had so injured and disgraced the pretensions 
of the privileged class as the trial of Verres, which Cicero 
had won so brilliantly against Hortensius, spreading 
abroad the deep corruption and wickedness of their pro- 
vincial government by his incidental publication. Further, 
Cicero had thrown the weight of his splendid eloquence 
into the scales wherein lay the ambition of the Only One, 
to receive the Eastern command, in defiance of the senate 
and of the conservatives. 

Whose candidate, then, was the self-made pleader from 
Arpinum?! Through his profession of patronus he had 
attached to himself the bankers and financial men, pretty 
nearly the entire equestrian class, many municipal towns, 
some guilds and corporations, also many talented younger 
men of the nobility, who warmly admired Cicero's genius 
and eloquence. 

Now Cicero had to gain the good-will of the oligarchy : 
he had to argue that his support of Pompey had been his 
chief motive for assuming for a season the role of popula- 
ris; viz. that he might gain either the support, or at least 
the neutrality, of the great captain. 

Catiline, too, was a competitor. His reputation, both 
public and private, was bad. That candidacy in itself 

1 Cf. also QuintusTullius Cicero's monograph, De Petitione Consulatus. 



PUBLIC ADVANCEMENT BEFORE 63 B.C. 65 

remains a curious symptom of the diseased condition of the 
body politic, and, as matter of actual politics, his aspira- 
tions for the highest elective office were by no means with- 
out fair chance of actual success ; and he, too, had been 
a veritable tiger and fratricide in Proscription times. 
\ Now Catiline and another candidate, Antonius (an un- 
worthy son of the great orator), had made a combination 
(^coitio^ to defeat the Arpinate lawyer at the poUs.^ The 
funds at their disposal were ample and were used without 
stint for corruption of the electorate. And they were sup- 
ported by the same two big politicians whose names were 
involved in the futile plot related above. If Csesar and 
Crassus desired the defeat of Cicero, they certainly worked 
also for the consular honors of Catiline. A crisis, if you 
liiie, or anything that would make for disintegration. 

[Asconius thinks Csesar and Crassus were hostile to Cicero's further 
advancement, "because they observed that his rank in civil affairs was 
growing day by day " : they desired no newcomer in the field who was 
sure to wield considerable influence and who was looming up too large to 
be made an asset in the further political ambition of both or either of 
them. They rated him higher than Mommsen did later on.] 

\ In this same year, 64, Cfesar for the first time was a pre- 
siding and directing justice in a Roman court : not prtetor 
as yet, but as ex-sedile, he was chosen a kind of deputy- 
prsetor, or supplementary one, called by the Romans index 
qucestioms^ (or qusesitor). His court was that entrusted 
with cases of murder. (Suet., 11.) Now Csesar, with 
impressive consistency, made responsible and treated as 
murderers those men who, for turning in heads of the 

^Asconius, "Cic. Oratio in Toga Candida," p. 82. Coierant enim 
ambo, ut Ciceronem consulatu deicerent, adiutoribus usi firmissimis M. 
Crasso et C. Ccesare. Cicero said that Antony and Catiline met in the 
night before this speech, in the house of a certain nobleman marked and 
known " in hoc largitionis qucestu,'''' quasi-notorious for that kind of 
work. Asconius says that either Csesar or Crassus was meant. 

2 Cf. Madvig, " Verf.," I, p. 389 ; Mommsen, " Staatsrecht," I, 3d ed., 
p. 384. 



66 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

proscribed, had received the bounties of Sulla out of the 
public treasury, and he refused to consider as a defence 
the immunity specifically granted to such executioners by 
a certain paragraph of the Cornelian Laws. 

It was politics, though, rather than striving for justice, 
for Csesar specifically selected the case of the man who 
slew Lucretius Ofella by order of the dictator, and he 
received the penalty. (Dio, 37, 11.) 

But Catiline, similarly prosecuted, was acquitted. The 
public marvelled at both results. A commentary will 
readily suggest itself to the intelligence of my readers. 
Catiline was among the assets of the future. 



On Dec. 10 the newly chosen tribunes regularly began 
their year, twenty-one days before Jan. 1, when the curu- 
lian magistrates were inducted. In those December days, 
then, of 64, one of the new tribunes promulgated an agra- 
rian law. Indeed, since the autumn of 91, twenty-seven 
years before, when the noble Drusus perished, there had 
been none. The new Gracchus was called Ser villus 
Rullus. 



CHAPTER V 
63 B.C. 

A CRITICAL YEAR 

The effort had been made to keep the bill from the 
new consul Cicero as long as possible. It was a sweeping 
measure, this Lex Agraria Rulliana, but Cicero's elo- 
quence caused it to fail without being actually submitted 
to the electorate of the Comitia Trihuta. 

RuUus, Cicero said (§ 27), wants to be popularis. We 
see now much more clearly why Caesar was opposed to 
any consulate for the debater from Arpinum. Cicero 
plainly avowed himself champion of senatorial primacy 
and initiative in public life. Also he made much of it 
that Pompey, being absent, was excluded from the land 
commission. We see that early in 63, in spite of Caesar's 
efforts and bounties and declarations and measures, Pom- 
pey still was the people's man par excellence. Here, then, 
Caesar (who stood behind Rullus) and Cicero came into 
a political conflict, in which the orator defeated the poli- 
tician. ^ 

Still another conflict arose between them when Cicero 
undertook the defence of old C. Rabirius,^ who was 
charged with high treason (^ perduellio') . It was Caesar 
who secretly equipped {subornavit, Suet., 12) his future 
lieutenant, T. Labienus, to prosecute for the killing of 
the tribune Saturninus — thirty-seven years before ! Our 

1 Drumann curiously argues that Caesar was not sincere in his support 
of this agrarian law, but Lange, 3, 209, says : " Die demokratische Partis 
rechnete iibrigens ernstUch auf Annahme des Gesetzes." 

2 Mommsen, " Strafrecht," p. 582. Dio, 37, 26, is incisive, as often. 
Suetonius, 12, is critical and unfriendly. 

67 



68 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

Caesar and Lucius Csesar were drawn by lot — curious lot 
— after the indictment had been made. Really the plan 
was deeper : C^sar, as a democratic politician, undertook 
nothing less than to undermine one of the great bulwarks 
of senatorial power ; viz., the so-called Final Resolution of 
the Great Council (^Senatus Consultum UltimuTn): "that 
the consuls should see to it that the state suffer no im- 
pairment" ; it was something like martial law, declaration 
of a state of siege, or the modern suspension of Habeas 
Corpus. An assault this on the constitutional preroga- 
tives of the Great Council, a phase of the old struggle 
between the plebs and the oligarch}^, which had gone on 
since Tiberius Gracchus, with many a truce but with no 
lasting peace. 



In this year died G. Metellus Pius, pontifex maximus. 
Caesar, with complete indifference to seniority among his 
colleagues, at the comparatively youthful age of thirty- 
seven at once became an active candidate for the vacancy. 
Servilius Isauricus, his old commander, as well as the eld- 
erly and dignified Lutatius Catulus, also sought this high 
honor. The senate itself seemed to compete with Csesar. 
Catulus even (Plut., 7) privately offered him large sums 
if he would desist. It seems, as far as the electorate was 
concerned, to have been a question of the organized dis- 
tribution of money. Caesar was induced by the advances 
of Catulus to increase his liabilities even more. The fig- 
ures named by the princeps senatus indeed seem to have 
given the keen politician ^ some base for his own compu- 
tation. In all problems of largitio he was an expert. 
The issue was his victory. The personal immunity of 
the supreme pontifex, coupled with the official residence 
in the Regia on the Via Sacra^ were almost indispensable 
to him at tliat stage of his affairs. But the comitia of 

^ Plut., 7, 6 5^ Koi wXelci} Trpoadaveiad/xevos. 



A CRITICAL YEAR 69 

the field of Mars in that year gave him also a prsetorship. 
The long-needed governorship abroad, then, was at last 
in sight, and with it the first substantial opportunity of 
satisfying his bankers. 

It was as prgetor-elect that Csesar in that critical year 
shared in the debate of December 5, when the punishment 
was determined which the Catilinarian conspirators were 
to suffer. Now these men, indeed, were to suffer not as 
populares. The danger to the conservatives was not from 
any possible martyrdom of these wretched men, — no, it 
was from the procedure itself : it was in the usurpation 
and disregard of constitutional safeguards. 

When Cicero on that day called upon the prsetor-elect, 
Gains Julius Caesar, the latter alone voted to imprison 
them for life and confiscate their estates. Sallust has 
preserved for us the speech ("Cat.," 51), which we must 
esteem a close representation of what he actually said, not 
less than the counterspeech of Cato on that day. Even 
eighteen years later, Cicero (" Att.," 12, 21, 1) designated 
Caesar's motion as a stern one (^severa). The speech lead- 
ing up to it is a great speech. It is permeated with 
psychological tact and with that dispassionate appeal to 
judgment and understanding which is always admirable, 
but is particularly difiicult to maintain in any great crisis. 
Csesar here also (51, 20) revealed his conception of death : 
" As to the penalty, I indeed may state what is implied : 
that in grief and miseries death is a repose from troubles, 
not a torture ; that it is a dissolution of all things con- 
cerning human beings, that beyond it there is no place 
for either care or joy." As for the penalty, he urged 
that the choice of exile was ordinarily permitted to con- 
victed Romans. Now these Catilinarians had deserved 
the severest fate imaginable, but their extraordinary guilt 
should not goad the senate to resort to any action sure to 
create an evil and unwise precedent. 

He goes on to cite the Thirty Tyrants from Xenophon's 



70 ANNALS OF CESAR 

" Hellenica." Sulla, too, began by chastising tbe wicked : 
but he had not stopped there, but advanced to summary 
and illegal procedure. But of course no Sullanian meas- 
ures were to be apprehended from a chief magistrate such 
as Cicero was. But some other time and with a different 
consul at the helm, the acts now proposed might be cited 
for precedent or might be repeated in a manner sure to 
plague those who now were advocates of summary pro- 
cedure. Now he (Csesar) would not even grant to the 
culprits the alternative of exile, which the Lex Porcia 
permitted to convicted citizens ; but he moved "that their 
estates be confiscated, they themselves be imprisoned in 
a series of municipal towns such as were particularly rich 
(so as to hold them responsible by bonds ?), and that no 
one hereafter should have the senate debate about them 
nor make propositions to the plebs (i.e.^ to legislate them 
out) : and that the senate was resolved that whoever acted 
otherwise would act against the state and the general wel- 
fare." — Again Csesar failed, and Cato's fearless and radi- 
cal resolution prevailed. 

[At this point it may interest the reader to observe that the three 
Greek writers, Plutarch, Appian, Dio, are curiously inexact in reporting 
this famous debate. Plut., c. 7 : el bk (ppovpoivro dedivres iv irbXecn t^s 
'iraXias &s div avrbs eXrjrai KiK^puv, fxixP'- o5 Kar air oXe /xr] 6 y Kari- 
Xivas, varepov ip elprjVT] kul kut yjavxi-o-v trepl eKaarov ry ^ovXy yvdvai. 
irapi^eL-. i.e., this imprisonment in the towns to be merely temporary until 
Catiline (then in the field at Fsesulse) be defeated, when a quiet and 
orderly trial by the senate would be feasible. Plutarch's hurried infer- 
ence. Elsewhere ("Cat. Min.," 22) Plutarch seems to have transcribed 
from an authority positively unfriendly to Csesar, possibly Livy : "But 
Csesar arose, since he was both a powerful speaker and rather wished to 
increase every change and dislodgmeut (Kivrjaiv) in the government as 
material for the designs which he himself entertained, rather than to 
allow it to be extinguished. ..." 

Appian (" B. C," 2, 5) adds a motion of the senator ISfero : "To keep 
them guarded until they destroy Catiline by war and gain the most accu- 
rate information. ..." He also adds that Csesar was not clean from 
the suspicion that he was himself an accomplice of the conspirators. 
Csesar's own motion Appian presents thus: "That Cicero should sepa- 
rately place (pLadicrdaC) the men in those towns of Italy which he himself 



A CRITICAL YEAR 71 

approved, until., after the defeat of Catiline in the field, they be brought 
into court." A substantial agreement with Plutarch. 

Dio, who here and there writes in pragmatizing inferences of his own 
(e.gr., that the senate expelled Catiline from Rome by an express reso- 
lution, 37, 33), presents at least (37, 36) the motion of Caesar with com- 
plete precision.] 

Plutarch, by the bye (" Cat. Min.," 24), reports a curious 
incident which happened on that day of tremendous ten- 
sion: while the debate was going on, a small billet was 
passed in to Caesar. At once Cato's attention was arrested, 
and he demanded to know the contents. But what was 
his shame and disgust when Csesar let him read it. It 
was a private note of an amatory nature, written by 
Cato's half-sister Servilia, mother of Brutus.^ 



A word or nod from the consul, Cicero, might have cost 
Caesar his life when this momentous session ended : the 
swords of the equestrian youth were ready to strike him 
down. Catulus (bitterly disappointed on account of the 
Pontifex Maximus matter) and Piso were foremost in the 
effort to have Caesar named among the conspirators. The 
latter had been made to suffer at the hands of Caesar : for 
Piso had unjustly imposed a penalty upon a Transpadane. 



1 Cf . Suet,, "Cses.," 50, Sed ante alias dilexit Marci Bruti matrem 
Serviliam, cui et primo suo consulatu (in 59) sexagiens sestertio margari- 
tam mercatus est." Bought for her indeed a pearl of great price, for it 
cost six million sesterces = ^ 264,000. Perhaps we should read margaritas. 
All myths, says the flighty Froude. 



CHAPTER VI 

62, 61, 60 B.C. 

C^SAR AS PR^TOR AND IN HIS FIRST IMPEBIUM 

On January 1 he ignored the inauguration of the new 
consuls, Silanus and Murena. Instead of attending that 
function, he proposed (Suet., 15) that old Catulus, cura- 
tor for the rebuilding of the temples on the Capitol, 
should give an account and be deprived of this honorable 
charge. Thus, not the name of Catulus should appear in 
the inscription on the new temple of the Capitoline Father 
of Light, but (Dio, 37, 44) that of Pompey, to whom 
the completion was to be entrusted. Clearly, Pompey's 
name was still among the assets of Caesar's party. The 
conqueror of the East was back on the ^gean, and await- 
ing the clement season. 

■ Csesar was prsetor. In what court did he preside? 
When his life came to be written and traced, so greatly 
the politician outshone all else, that this simple and im- 
portant civic fact was entirely passed over. We know 
not, quite definitely, in which qucestio he presided. 

Clearly planning and plotting for position was the fore- 
most thing in his mind. So he supported the tribune, 
Q. Csecilius Metellus, when the latter, a political servitor 
of the Perpetual Commander, proposed a novel plebiscitum. 
" Catiline was still holding the field in the north: this 
situation furnished the excuse for the bill of Metellus ; 
viz., that Pompey was to be called to Rome with his 
troops, promptly, and secure the capital against Catiline. 
It was from the steps of the temple of Castor, amid glad- 
iators, with Csesar by his side, that Metellus proposed to 

72 



AS PRiETOR AND IN HIS FIRST IMPERIUM 73 

put this, essentially a measure of current governmental 
policy, to a vote. But Cato, too, was then a tribune, 
young but fearless : " his tongue has always been unfet- 
tered against extraordinary powers." (Cic, " Sest.," 60.) 
Cato, at the risk of his own life, blocked these subversive 
measures. (Plut., "Cat. Min.," 27.) In the end, Csesar 
was compelled to see that even this pear, which he seemed 
to (somewhat ostentatiously) assist in plucking for the 
people's favorite, was not yet ripe. The senate passed a 
resolution forbidding both politicians to exercise their mag- 
istracies for the time being. In the end (or soon) Caesar 
made his peace with the senate, probably by withdrawing 
the bill for the humiliation of Catulus. For once, at least, 
Caesar's avidity to contribute to the further discomfiture of 
the senate had overshot its mark. Metellus fled across the 
^gean to Pompey : just as though he held his mandate, 
not from the Roman people, but from the Only One. 

Not long after this time, Catiline expired on the battle- 
field of Pistoria in the foothills of the Apennines. At 
Rome, of course, the billows ^ of excitement against all 
men even remotely indictable, seethed for some time 
longer. Thus, Curius (lover of Fulvia, Cicero's secret 
agent), accomplice of Catiline at one time, Curius who 
had been pardoned for turning state's evidence, sought 
to entangle Caesar himself in these supplementary prose- 
cutions. (Suet., "Caes.," 17.) But Cicero himself bore 
witness that Caesar had voluntarily/ made to Cicero certain 
communications concerning the plot. Vettius, the in- 
former, was even thrown into prison, where he perished. 
As for the qucesitor ^ (or extraordinary judge) Caesar dealt 
harshly with him, but in strict conformity with the public 
law. For Novius, though holding an inferior public power, 
had accepted an indictment against one who held a greater 
or higher office than he himself. 

iCf. Cic, "pro Sulla." 

2 So we should read for quoestorem, in Suet., 17. 



74 ANNALS OF CAESAR 

In December of this year, the nocturnal annual solem- 
nity of the official religion of Rome, viz. in honor of the 
Good Groddess (probably Fauna, goddess of propagation), 
was held. At that time it was held in the Regia, the 
official residence of Caesar as pontifex maximus. This 
annual celebration where all males, and indeed everything 
masculine, were banned, ^ was gone through with in the 
presence of the Vestal Virgins. 

Here P. Clodius (Claudius) Pulcher, brother of the then 
notorious Clodia, an accepted lover of Caesar's young wife, 
Pompeia, entered (in the pursuit of his intrigue), disguised 
as a music-girl. He escaped, indeed (" Att.," 1, 12, 3), but 
not before his identity had been revealed. Not the dis- 
honor of Csesar's house and family, but the bold desecra- 
tion of the state religion, was the concern which made of 
this occurrence a cause celebre with portentous political 
consequences. If it had been merely one case more of 
marital trouble, it would have made no ripple in that cor- 
rupt society. So Pompey, too, at this time had been 
compelled to send a letter of divorcement to his consort, 
the Lady Mucia, before he himself appeared in the capital. 
("Att.,"l, 12, 3.) 

61 B.C. 

Nothing official about it was done, it seems, before the 
new year. Officially, indeed, as pontifex, Caesar took no 
action, and still he did demean himself in a way which we 
must call the politician's way. He did, indeed, divorce 
his wife ; he could not do less. But, at the same time, as 
it seems from the record, he sheltered the corrupt young 
nobleman against the political consequences ; sheltered, I 

1 Wissowa in Pauly. Wissowa reviews the data of tradition. The 
core or essence of the matter, however, remains distinctly as before, i.e., 
nebulous and distant. Cf. the deafxocpdpia of Athens. The relation of 
Plut., 10, is replete with curious detail. (Livy ?) Even in the " Periocha " 
of Livy, 103, the matter finds a place : without any room for doubt as to 
Pompeia' s guilt. 



AS PR^TOR AND IN HIS FIRST IMPERIUM 75 

say, the very man who had covered Caesar's house with 
infamy. These political consequences, indeed, turned out 
to be portentous : they became a part of Cicero's life, and 
further on, drove him into exile. To Caesar's epicurean 
convictions the ' gods ' and the official rites were a matter 
for official publicity and routine merely. As for Clodius 
himself, charges of incest with one of his sisters were freely 
bandied about in Rome. As regards Caesar himself, public 
opinion was divided. (Plut., 16.) Some credited him with 
delicacy merely, others charged him with the desire of 
gratifying the plebeians among whom the young libertine 
was popular. 

Clodius, indeed, was to Caesar's mind an asset of the 
future, as Catiline had been. A state trial followed. The 
true conservatives, indeed, the sincere believers in a ritual 
under which the commonwealth seemed to them to have 
flourished, had reason to desire the humiliation and exile 
of the young debauchee. 

Among the newcomers, Cicero (cf. "Att.," 1, 16) out- 
did himself in his intensity of aversion, perhaps even went 
out of his way in his zeal of strong conviction. Clodius, 
however, was acquitted by a jury which voted thirty- 
one against twenty-five in his f a vor — " spotted senators,; 
poverty-stricken knights, tribunes not copper-plated (bra- ' 
zen) so much as with itching palms for copper" (money) ' 
("Att.,"l, 16, 3.) Who paid them? 



About this time, probably early in 61, the conqueror of 
the East and the idol of the starveling mob of the Forum, 
a mob truly, 'the leach of the treasury,' i reentered the 
imperial city. How did he come ? He landed in Brun- 
disium and, then — he dismissed his legions, indeed, his 
own legions. It was not in him to be a Sulla. Even Dio 

1 "Att," 1, 16, 11 : accedit illud, quod ilia contionalis hirudo cerarii, 
misera ac ieiuna plebecula, me ab hoc Magno unice diligi putat. 



76 ANNALS OF CESAR 

Cassius (37, 20) marvelled at it, but he did not scold him 
for this continence of civic virtue,^ but conceived it as 
Pompey's greatest achievement : " for, having the greatest 
power both on sea and land, and the amplest funds gained 
from the prisoners of war, and being in close relations to 
numerous princes and kings, and having gained possession 
of the various populations over which he established rule, 
by acts of kindness resulting in this devotion, and having 
been able (if he chose), through the same, to gain entire 
control of the Romans, most of Avhom would voluntarily 
have accepted him (even if some few would have opposed 
him), but from weakness would have entirely agreed in 
this — he was not willing to do so, but at once, the mo- 
ment he had crossed over to Brundisium, dismissed all his 
forces on his own initiative, neither the senate nor the 
people having voted anything about them, he having no 
concern to use them, not even for the purposes of his 
triumph. For since he knew that the record of Marius 
and that of Sulla were odious to men, he was not willing 
to cause them any apprehension (not even for a small 
number of days) that they were going to suffer anything 
similar." ^ 

\ While still in Asia, Pompey had, indeed, distributed 
bounties to his troops with so generous a hand, that he 
could well expect that any future situation, or crisis, would 
find him with a superb body of veterans eager and ready 
to flock to his standards whenever he would summon them. 
He believed so then, he believed so with absolute convic- 
tion eleven years later, on the eve of the Civil War. 



-. And Csesar ? He was to go to the province assigned 
him; viz., Bsetica and Lusitania ('Further Spain,' roughly 

■^ As Mommsen did, later on. 

2 App. Mithr. 116, puts it briefly : by the dismissal of his troops, he as- 
tounded {i^iirXrj^ep) the Romans, as though by a popular act (drjfioriK^). 



AS PR.ETOR AND IN HIS FIRST IMPERIUM 77 

identical with Andalusia and Portugal). But there were 
those who would not let him go, the bankers. His 
liabilities, then, exceeded his assets by much more than 
one million dollars in our standard (twenty-five million 
sesterces?), says Appian. Caesar resorted to the richest 
man in Rome, with whom he had, more than once, had 
joint operations behind the scenes. Crassus, indeed, guar- 
anteed Caesar's debts to the extent of eight hundred and 
thirty talents, held by the most impatient of the creditors 
(Plut., 11), for he stood in need of Caesar's keenness and 
fire for his impending anti-Pompeian policy. Caesar, in- 
deed, set out for his province without awaiting the usual 
votes of the senate, which equipped the new governor with 
funds and other allowances. 

[The anecdote of his preferring to be first in a wretched hamlet of the 
mountains rather than being second at Rome, is assigned by Plut,, 11, to 
this tour, though somewhat tentatively (X^yerai). If true, the incident 
occurred later ; Csesar had not yet figured at all in any ' struggles for 
primacy ' (irepl irpwTeiwv a^tWai) : these had not yet fairly begun. If 
at this period Csesar, with open vizor, had entered the lists against the 
Only One, it would have struck his political contemporaries as ridiculous, 
or grotesque. Drumann (p. 187) says aptly: "Der Urheber dieses 
Mahrchens hat in seiner Seels gelesen, aber falsch." Dio, 37 (52-53), 
assigns the dreams of mother and Alexander to this sojourn of Caesar as 
governor while at Gades. ] 

This province was suffering, i.e. the civilized and settled 
portions, from robbers and bandits. These alone he could 
have easily disposed of. But for claiming a triumph in 
Rome, a helium iustum was requisite. 

But, notice carefully, dear reader, how was he to have 
a war? Dio (37, 52, Livy?) distinctly says that Caesar 
found a pretext ; viz., he made a demand of the moun- 
taineers of the Herminius range (^Serra Ustrella in N. 
Portugal) to abandon their old homes and move down 
into the plains, knowing full well that they would refuse. 

And when some of their northern neighbors removed 
their women and children across the Durius (^Duero), he 



78 ANNALS OF CiESAR 

laid his hands upon their towns. In a second campaign 
against the mountaineers, he pursued them to the Atlantic. 
Here, really beyond the confines of his own province (in 
G-alliciaf)^ so Dio relates (Livy ?), Csesar had trouble with 
pontoons devised to pursue them to an island near the 
coast ; P. Scfevius distinguished himself, a new Horatius 
Codes. 

These military operations in the main occurred in 61. 

60 B.C. 

The earlier part of this year probably was devoted, in a 
measure, to internal betterment. Csesar regulated the ever 
recurring difficulties of creditors and debtors,^ acting as a 
kind of umpire between them : clearly, allowing them both 
to present their case (e/3/3aySeue) : The debtors, from their 
income, should annually give up two-thirds to their credit- 
ors until the obligations were cancelled. It strikes us as 
a bit severe : but it gave him the good-will of the provin- 
cials. So he quit his province, but not before he had be- 
come rich himself, and enriched the three legions which 
had served under him. Apart from imposts, and fees, 
and confiscations, there was the sale of captives, always 
to be put into the category of quick assets, for the traders 
in slaves seem to have followed the Roman camps as regu- 
larly as vultures hover over fields of carnage when battles 
are done. 



1 This is related by Plut., 12, in a friendly, almost genial, way : did he 
transcribe Oppius here ? or Balbus ? 



CHAPTER VII 

THE TRIUMVIRATE AND C^SAR's CONSULATE 
60-59 B.C. 

C^SAR hastened to Rome (Suet., 18), just as he had 
hastened to his province. For his successor he did not 
wait. Triumph and consulate were the next prizes. He 
knew that he had arrived at the threshold of greater 
things. When he arrived, the day had already been 
published by the consuls, on which their successors (the 
chief magistrates for 59 B.C.) were to be voted for. 
Csesar's return to Rome occurred in the month of June 
("Att.," 2, 1, 9). 

Caesar could not be voted for (ratio eius haberi) unless 
he entered the city as a private citizen. Here, again, he 
was compelled to yield to the opposition, in the senate, of 
Cato, whom, as the years went by, he probably hated 
more than any other man in public life. In vain did 
Csesar, through his own servitors in the senate, manoeu- 
vre for a special immunity. ^ Constrained to choose, he 
selected the consulate. Caesar had arranged his plans 
for the canvass even in December, 61, though personally 
absent. ("Att.," 1, 17, 11.) Lucceius, a very rich sena- 
tor and amateur historian, was induced — we know not 
by what arguments — to form a combination with Caesar 
(coire), i.e., to appear as a candidate in the electioneer- 
ing, but throw all his influence into the scales of Csesar's 
candidacy. And this cooperation was of a very palpable 
nature ; Lucceius, through his agents, gave out the prom- 
ise of bribe money in all the electoral units (centurise) 

1 Ut legibus solveretur (Suet., 18). 
79 



80 ANNALS OF CESAR 

t 
as funds coming from Caesar and Lucceius conjointly. 
The leaders of the Optimates did not, indeed, harbor any 
hope of preventing Caesar's election. They were troubled 
by the fear that Lucceius, too, might pull through, and 
then, in the impending consular year of their most con- 
sistent and resourceful foe — they would have to con- 
tend, not with one hostile chief magistrate, but with two. 
Therefore, they joined together and guaranteed to Bibulus 
a corruption fund not smaller than that of Csesar and 
Lucceius. Most of them put their hands into their 
pockets, and even the rigid Stoic Cato consented to 
contribute, for, as he viewed the matter, it was a case 
of having the end justify the means ; it was a case of 
bribery (Suet., 19) in the interest of the state (e repuh- 
lica). Caesar and Bibulus were chosen. The latter had 
been cozened by his shrewder colleague in their aedilician 
year, and was most probably still sore, if not positively 
truculent even. 



[Did the great pact of the three most powerful politicians precede or 
follow upon Csesar's election? Did it come before Csesar's consular 
inauguration ? 

First, we must not fail to see that both Asinius Pollio and Livy, delib- 
erate historians of the next generation (in composing), marked the year 
60 B.C. (Metellus and Afranius conss.) as the beginning of the gi'eat crisis. 
The year must have been so conceived on account of this very thing ; viz., 
of the Triumvirate. As for the Patavian, a lover of the past and, in set- 
ting down the civil war, a positive partisan of Pompey, Livy, in relating 
this very year (60 b.c), seems to have been positively unfriendly to Cae- 
sar. For even the summary of Livy, 103, seems still to breathe the bitter 
spirit of the original : " eoque consulatas candidato et captante rempubli- 
cam invadere (to usurp), conspiratio inter tres principes civitatis facta 
est, Cn. Pompeium, M. Crassum, C. Csesarem." Livy tlms presented the 
great contract as a settlement coincident with, and of course intrinsically 
bound up with, CEesar's canvass. 

Livy, indeed, set it down in his text, somewhere, perhaps at this point 
of his relation, that it was uncertain whether it was more advantageous 
to the state that Csesar came into the world, or whether it would have 
been better for Rome if he had never been born. In Seneca's time, with 
Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, added to the list of Caesar's success- 



THE TRIUMVIRATE AND CAESAR'S CONSULATE 81 

ors, this was a current saying. i And this, too, is the spirit of Suetonius 
(120 A.D.), under Hadrian, in the main, Augustus called Livy a Pom- 
peian. 

Suetonius (19) relates that after the election (but before Jan, 1, 59) 
Caesar, angry because in the allotment of future consular "provinces" 
he had been treated with contempt by the senate, formed the famous 
combination. But Livy was closer to the times. 

Plutarch (" Crass.," 14) relates things thus: the initiative in the great 
pact was Caesar's, He did it all as a part of the work necessary to make 
sure of his consular election. He desired no opposition from either : but 
if he lacked the support of both, then he had no hope of his election at all. 

These considerations moved him to effect the reconciliation of Crassus 
and Pompey ; if they were in harmony, then men like Cicero, Catulus,^ 
Cato would be negligible political quantities. 

The political result, too (this quite in Livy's spirit), is aptly put: the 
strength of this combination was truly impregnable (t(rx'>5 &/xaxos), by 
which he (eventually) dissolved senate and people. 

In "Pomp.," 47, Plutarch puts it similarly : Caesar as candidate could 
not afford to have the opposition of either of the other two, and so he 
reconciled them to each other, a thing praiseworthy in itself, but the 
motives were bad (Livy ?) : this certainly is not due to Asinius Pollio. 
The ability (SeivoTris') which Caesar therein revealed was astounding, but 
at the base was deep intrigue. The result — the first result — was Caesar's 
election. In "Caes.," 13: Caesar reconciles Pompey and Crassus, com- 
bines the political strength of both and transfers it upon himself ; by a 
transaction which was dubbed a kindly one, he, without being observed 
in doing so, accomplished a political revolution. Cato alone from the 
beginning foresaw and foretold the political results. 

Appian ("B. C," 2, 9) puts forward the resentment of Pompey be- 
cause the senatorial majority had been holding up, as we say in the 
United States, the acts and settlements of his Eastern campaigns. The 
envy and bitterness of his predecessor, L. Lucullus, here was influential. ^ 
Deeply annoyed — for the matter had hung fire since January, 61 — Pom- 
pey secured Caesar's partisan support (Trpocreratp^ferat), giving him his 
sworn pledge that he would cooperate with him for the consular dignity. 
And then Caesar immediately reconciled Crassus with him. And these 
three having the greatest power over all " contributed their services to one 
another" (xAs xpet'as dWi^Xois a-vvTjpdvi^ov : as those joining in a picnic).* 

1 Teuffel, " Hist, of Rom. Lit.," 256, n. 3. 

2 Plutarch here seems to pragmatize for himself : Catulus had died in 
61 B.C. (Cic, "Att.," 1, 20, 3.) Cicero had a fair idea of being the 
leading man in the senate at this time, replacing Catulus, in fact. 

3 Not to omit Metellus Creticus. 

* App., ib. Varro wrote a political treatise dealing with their agree- 
ment, which treatise he entitled TpLKdpavos. The designation of Varro 

Q 



82 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

Dio Cassius (37, 54-58) also makes the Triumvirate not only a shrewd 
political achievement of Csesar's, but also a matter preceding the Consular 
Comitia of 60 : C^sar was brilliant in seizing the emergency. Dio sums 
up his own estimate of Caesar's motives thus : For he knew full well that 
he would acquire mastery over the others immediately through the friend- 
ship with those men (the two), but over them not much later, one through 
the other. Dio then goes on to elucidate the motives of Pompey and of 
Crassus. As for the latter, Dio says, he never, in a whole-souled man- 
ner, identified himself with the interests either of senate or plebs, but 
rather pursued a distinctly personal policy, purely to enhance his private 
power and prestige. Dio says also (c. 57) that they pledged themselves 
for this Great Pact of give and take by an oath. Cato was fairly alone 
in his opposition, practically isolated. All the others pursued private 
rather than public ends. He alone acted from deep conviction and from 
his inborn m^ner of being. And further, Dio adds, the Three for the 
present kept the Great Pact concealed from the general public as much 
as possible.] 

59 B.C. 

Ccesar's Consular Policy 

As to this momentous year it is altogether the wisest 
plan first to enumerate and survey the public acts of the 
consul Csesar, and then to examine their purpose and de- 
sign. And first of all we may present what Caesar had 
most at heart, and which the men of his day expected him 
to propose, both those who looked to him as well as those 
who were opposed and who eagerly, nay passionately, de- 
sired that he and it might fail. 

And this central point of his coming measures was 
fairly well known even before Jan. 1, 59. Caesar's polit- 
ical agents were active, even before the publication of the 
bills, as Cicero ("Att.," 2, 3, 3) intimates. On him, 
probably in December, 60, called Caesar's intimate friend, 
Cornelius Balbus, the Phenician Spaniard. "He assured 

by Appian as avyypacpeijs tls marks the Alexandrine as a mere transcriber 
here. Perhaps he found it in Asinius Pollio. The date of the "Three- 
headed Monster" probably of the next year 59 only. Cf. Hesiod, " Th.," 
287, where Geryoneus may be meant. Clearly Tyrrell, too, is wrong, 
"Corresp. of Cicero," vol. I, 270, when he assigns the Triumvirate to 
59 instead of 60. 



THE TRIUMVIRATE AND CESAR'S CONSULATE 83 

me that he (Caesar) in all things would avail himself of 
my advice and that of Pompey, and would endeavor to 
bring Crassus into association with Pompey." Flattering 
the first part, and somewhat disingenuous the second, as 
though the triumvirate had not yet been established: 
clearly kept under cover yet. 

January is close at hand ('' Att.," ib.): every one knows 
that the agrarian bill of Julius Caesar will be up. 'Either,' 
said Cicero, in the letter to his bosom friend, 'either I 
must make stout opposition, in which there is a certain 
swordsmanship of debate but full of applause, or say 
nothing, which amounts to withdrawing to one of my 
country-places ; or I must even support it, which, they 
say, Csesar expects of me, in such a manner as not to en- 
tertain any doubt on the subject.' Cicero leaned rather 
heavily on Pompey at the time ; Csesar's expectation, 
therefore, was not oversanguine. 

January 1 has come and gone. Perhaps even Feb- 
ruary 1. For, as Bibulus had the lictors in January, 
L. Lange^ assumes that Csesar brought out his agrarian 
law in February only; i.e. put it before the senate for 
debate. 

Clearly, when Cicero wrote to Att., 2, 4, 2, the bill was 
before the senate and before the political world: also 
Crassus had come out for it. Cicero intimates that the 
great capitalist has been derelict in upholding his own 
class. The orator himself is sorely depressed. He would 
like to make a tour to the classic land of Egypt ("Att.," 
2, 5, 1), if only he did not fear being called a deserter by 
public opinion. And Csesar had taken steps that the de- 
bates of the senate should be regularly published. ^ Cicero 
fears the one man, Cato. ' What will history say of me ? 
What will be said six hundred years hence ? ' Are there 
any optimates left? 

1 "R.Alt.," 3, 279. 

2 Ut diurna acta confierent et publicarentur. Suet., " Caes.," 20. 



84 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

But now, as for the provisions of the First Agrarian 
Law of Csesar.i He strove to have the bill be positively- 
fair to every interest. 

In the latter part of April a second and supplementary 
bill 2 was published, submitting for assignment that crown 
jewel in the tiara of the imperial city, the district of Cam- 
pania, that splendidly fertile country about desolate 
Capua,3 and the Campus Stellas to the north of Casilinum. 
This second bill seems to have created somewhat of a sen- 
sation. There were to be twenty commissioners : Ceesar 
himself not to be among them. There was to be no forced 
expropriation. The prices were to conform to the official 
ratings of the census. Pompey's veterans were to be pro- 
vided for. The commissioners were men of distinguished 
fitness. The receivers of assignments were to be those 
householders who had three children. 

All very well — said the optimates, but an agrarian law 
proposed, not by a tribune, but by a consul ! He cannot 
be sincere about it ! It is simply political bribery^ on a 
large scale. It was not the assignment, so Cato declared, 
that he feared, but the political rewards that the legislator 
would gather later on. 

It was, indeed, a somewhat elemental struggle : the 
optimates stubbornly stood out against any vote in the 
senate. They were fully convinced that the bill, if ap- 
proved by the senate and subsequently adopted by the 
eomitia centuriata^ would advance both the power and the 
ambition of the very man who was the most consistent foe 
of senatorial privilege then in public life. This sullen 
non possumus^ maintained under leadership of Cato, finally 

1 For details, v. Klibler, "Fragmenta," pp. 169-171. 
2L. Lange, "R. A.," 3, 279-280; Botsford, "Assemblies," 438- 
439. 

3 Kept desolate, as a warning example since its defection in the Hanni- 
balian war. 

4 Omnis expectatio largitionis agrarice, wrote Cic, about May 1, to 
Att., 2, 16, 1. 



THE TRIUMVIRATE AND CAESAR'S CONSULATE 85 

enraged Csesar so that he placed Cato under arrest : but 
soon the shrewd politician realized the unwisdom of this 
step, for he was making a martyr of Cato. 

Caesar, therefore, felt that he had arrived at the part- 
ing of the ways, and he determined that both this and all 
his further measures should go through by way of the 
Plebeian assemblies, as Plebiscita, turning his back upon 
the senate forever. Bibulus vainly resorted to all forms 
of obstruction known to the past, including that of watch- 
ing the skies. In vain Csesar had appealed to his colleague 
on the forum, addressing himself not only to his sense but 
also to his pride. 

Pompey, himself, came forward on the rostra to support 
the law. The public treasury, he could well claim, was 
now overflowing, thanks to his campaigns : no reason, 
therefore, for opposing the bill. Pompey, indeed, then 
held no public office : the more to be observed is the psy- 
chological skill of the astute politician who knew best 
when and how to gratify the pride of the Only One. 
Crassus also commended the bill before the people. 

On the day of the voting, Pompey's veterans were very 
numerous in the comitia tributa ; Bibulus was jostled and 
treated with rather foul indignities : his three tribunes 
were somehow removed out of action. ^ 



Pompey's marriage with Julia, who had reached the 
somewhat ripe age of twenty-three or so, probably opened 
the eyes of many as to the political league. In Cicero's 
eyes the great commander (his own mighty bulwark of 
former days) had ruined his reputation forever. (" Att.," 
2, 17, 2.) It means autocratic power for Rome, he said. 
A dynastic match, indeed. But this, he thought, cannot 
be the end. The thing must unfold itself further. These 

1 Plutarch's chap. 14 ("Caesar"), is a transcription from some very- 
bitter original, probably Livy. 



86 ANNALS OF CAESAR 

are merely steps toward ends which the contracting par- 
ties know well, but which, wisely, they withhold from the 
general public. We cannot budge in any direction, we can- 
not refuse to be slaves. (" Att.," 2, 18.) Every one sighs, 
no one formulates his discontent into distinct utterance. 
Young Curio is an exception. Compared with the average 
senator, I maintain my dignity well enough, but when I 
ponder my achievements of my consular year, then I feel 
small. Even in May, by the bye, Ctesar had offered Cicero 
a legateship under himself, even before the province had 
been publicly determined. Was Csesar quite sure about 
it in May ? 



The ratification, long delayed, of Pompey's Eastern set- 
tlements with kings, princes, commonwealths, was now, 
too, effected by Csesar, through a plebiscitum. Pompey's 
pride had been deeply wounded, a personal pride, curiously 
bound up with absolute lack of finesse in political manipu- 
lation. 'I have found Asia the furthermost of our prov- 
inces : as the central one do I give it back to the state.' 
So he had spoken, at his triumph, on the forum, in the 
autumn of 61. (Plin., "N. H.," 7, 26.) 
^'^ Incisive and far-reaching was Caesar's law for the gen- 
eral reform of provincial government. While it had more 
than one hundred chapters, it was designated from the 
most common form of wrong, viz., extortion^ as Lex lulia 
Repetundarum.i And the legislator was he whose Gallic 
gold within a few years was to flood the electioneering 
canvasses of Rome. 

The questions of funds and fees were defined with great 
precision. The governor must not receive money for giv- 
ing, or for not giving, a verdict. He shall not accept 
money for enrolling and directing troops to a certain 
point : he shall not receive money for making a speech 

1 Ktibler, " Fragmenta," pp. 172-174. 



THE TRIUMVIRATE AND CiESAR'S CONSULATE 87 

in the senate, or on committees ; even the stray frao-- 
ments of the law that reach us afford a curious mirror 
of that corruption, which, like a weaver's shuttle, moved 
incessantly and generally noiselessly, to and fro between 
the provinces and Rome. Money was paid to the govern- 
ors or their confidential agents for the appointment of 
judges, or referees, for imprisoning some one, or dis- 
charging him from prison, for acquitting or condemning, 
for awarding damages, nay, for sending innocent men to 
execution. Money was paid, also, for the approval of pub- 
lic works that were faulty or incomplete. 

As regards the subject of this biography, it must interest 
us very much to learn that two copies (in duplicate) of 
the governor's financial account were to be left in each of 
two different communities of the province, and that a third 
copy (identical in form) must be deposited in the treasury 
at Rome. It was prohibited in this Julian law, further, 
to pass beyond the province, to lead the army out of the 
province, to wage war on one's own initiative, to approach 
the frontiers of a kingdom without the mandate of people 
or senate.^ 

Caesar himself had endeavored in the past to be en- 
trusted with the task of annexing the Egyptian king- 
dom. He had failed : it was considered the most gigantic 
job in public life as to financial possibilities. Caesar and 
Pompey now put through a plebiscitam, which recog- 
nized Auletes as legitimate king. Caesar was charged 
with having accepted six thousand talents from the 
exiled king, jointly with Pompey (Suet., " Ctes.," 54),2 
perhaps notes, or claims to that amount. As a matter 
of fact, this penultimate Ptolemy oppressed his subjects 
so severely, that within a year he was compelled to quit 
Alexandria. 



1 Cic, " Pison.," 50 ; cf. also Sulla's "Lex Cornelia Maiestatis." 

2 Confirmed by Plut., " Caes.," 48. 



88 ANNALS OF CAESAR 

Which was the province to be? Probably even in 
May, 59, as we have observed, Caesar's own mind was set. 
Here, too, he dispensed with the senate : for even before 
Jan. 1, 59, they had voted him the care of country roads 
and forests as his proconsular imperium. (Suet., 19.) 
That is to say, they foolishly insulted him to the best 
of their ability. Caesar's creature and henchman, G. 
Vatinius, had the people adopt a plebiscitum giving to 
Caesar the provinces of Cisalpine Gaul and Illyricum, 
while Bibulus watched the skies once more. The term 
was to be five years, the forces three legions. The sen- 
ate added Transalpine Gaul (the province) and one more 
legion.^ Perhaps they had some lurking hope in the 
greater possibilities of war and death there. It seems 
mysterious on the surface. Well might the wits of the 
forum say that it had been the consular year of Julius 
and Csesar. 

y Why did Caesar take these provinces ? We will try to 
answer. Of all provinces. Cisalpine Gaul alone was con- 
tiguous to Italy proper, was the very threshold of Rome. 
No fleet necessary. Again, Caesar had with remarkable 
consistency, ever since he had entered the senate, acted 
as the patron of the communities in the Transpadane dis- 
trict. Furthermore, beyond the Alps, just then, in or 
near the Roman province, there was ample fuel for a war, 
or a rising. The Allobroges had suffered much from the 
extortions of Roman governors, such as Fonteius and his 
successors. Badly treated at Rome (63-62) in spite of 
their services against Catiline, they had risen in war and 
been defeated by Pomptinus, but were now but ill-subdued 
and of doubtful loyalty. Now all the Kelts were people 
of warm and strong feelings, and even in the year 52 
("Bell. Gall.," 7, 64) the Allobroges were believed to be 
still sore. These, then, were within the confines of Grallia 

iDioCass., 38, 8. 



THE TRIUMVIRATE AND CAESAR'S CONSULATE 89 

Narhonensis. But outside of it, too, but fairly contiguous, 
there was a sore spot. This was the old feud between the 
^dui and the Sequani. Even in 61 B.C. there had been 
adopted a Senatus Consultum^ at Rome, that whoever 
was governor of the Narbonensis should defend the ^dui 
and the other friends of the Roman people. Divitiacus,^ 
one of the great druids of his people and a leader of the 
JSduan aristocracy, had been in Rome, previous to that 
S. C, where Cicero himself ("Divin.," 1, 90) had become 
acquainted with him. 

In 60 B.C. there was in Rome, among the well-informed, 
a serious fear of a Gallic war, ^.e., fear of a war waged 
between different Gallic tribes. Cicero wrote ("Att.," 
1, 19, 2) : " For the ^dui, our brothers, are fighting ; the 
Sequani have fought (with Ariovistus, I believe), and 
have gotten decidedly the worst of it; and the Helve- 
tians no doubt are in arms, and are making forays into 
the province (a mere rumor of what was actually appre- 
hended along the upper Rhone). The senate resolved 
that the consulars^ should draw lots for the two Gauls, 
that a levy of troops be made, that excuses shall be in- 
valid, that plenipotentiaries be sent who should visit the 
commonwealths of Gaul (Ariovistus is not named) and 
exert themselves that these should not join the Helvetii." 
Curiously, Cicero's name came out first, but the senate 
voted that he remain at home. — All of which rendered 
it quite certain that, in a short time, at the northwesterly 
frontier of the empire the Roman eagles would have to 
interpose. 

Returning once more to Caesar's consular year 59, we 
see with delightful lucidity why the consul himself (and 

1 Hereafter we shall abbreviate S. C. 

2 Dr. T. Rice Holmes, " Caesar's Conquest of Gaul," 1899, p. 19, thinks 
that Divitiacus begged aid against Ariovistus. 

3 For consules we must read consulares : the context farther on de- 
mands this change ; Cicero drew. The matter escaped Tyrrell, 



90 ANNALS OF CiESAR 

probably expectant governor of Gaul in the near future) 
caused a S. C. to pass ("B. G.," 1, 35) by which Ari- 
ovist, the powerful chieftain of the Suebi, was called 
"king, and friend of the R. P." I reason thus : Ariovist 
was formidable : he had utterly beaten down both the 
^dui and the state which had invited Ariovist across the 
Rhine, the Sequani. The S. C. of 59 was intended to 
soothe the truculent German for the time being. For 
Ccesar was not prepared in 59 to leave the capital, before 
he had set in order his domestic policy and arranged for 
support during his absence. — It was manifest in 59 that 
in the near future the proconsul of the Narbonensis would 
have to assume — if necessary, at the head of a strong 
army — arbitration, first among the Gauls themselves and 
then between Gauls and their German oppressor. 



CHAPTER VIII 

C^SAR IN 58 B.C. 

Hardly had January, 58, come, when Csesar's foes 
strove to undo his legislation : one of the managers was 
the praetor L. Domitius Ahenobarbus, a brother-in-law of 
Cato. Technicalities there were in abundance, but Csesar 
defied them to let the senate review : in the senate the 
Three probably could either command a majority, or Cae- 
sar's tribunes had their Intercession ready. One charge 
against an alleged act of his consulate is cited in that 
summary of his money-grasping (Suet., 54) ; viz., that he 
filched three thousand pounds of gold from the capitol, 
replacing it with gilded ingots of copper. ^ 

There remain two matters to be noticed by us before 
we can accompany him in his swift tour to the lake of 
Geneva. First, the affair of Cicero, whom, early in 58, 
Caesar left to his fate ; viz., to the exile brought upon him 
by the new ' Plebeian ' Clodius. Even in May, 59, Caesar 
had offered Cicero a legateship, a psychological and pro- 
fessional impossibility for the scholar and pleader. — The 
other matter we must hold firmly before us at all times 
henceforward, if we desire to understand the politics of 
the next nine years. It is stated with that pregnant 
precision which renders Suetonius so weighty (c. 23): 
'' Towards his security for the future, he made it a great 
point always to keep attached the annual magistrates, and, 
of the candidates, to assist, or permit to reach the offices, 
no others than those who would pledge themselves to be 
champions of his absence ; of which agreement he did not 
hesitate to demand an oath and even a bond in writing." 

1 Perhaps from pamphlets published after March 15, 44. 
91 



92 ANNALS OF CtESAR 

[Of the notable books concerning Caesar's Gallic Wars, we may say that 
those of Napoleon III and Goeler have been antiquated by the large vol- 
ume of Dr. T. Rice Holmes. An enormous part of this book is given up 
to the tasks and conjectures of topographical verification. In weighing 
and valuing a library of local monographs, Dr. Holmes has not only es- 
sayed, but really accomplished, a Herculean labor. His mere criticism 
and survey covers in fine print pp. 335-514. Even Hirtius Oppius or 
Balbus could not trust Caesar more absolutely than Holmes does. I can- 
not agree that the official acceptance by the senate of Caesar's despatches, 
as they came in from time to time, disposes of all serious reasons for dis- 
trust. The swift composition of this military relation must not divert 
our attention from the overwhelming probability that it was composed on 
the verge of the civil war, and is an utterance made in the very death 
struggle of partisan bitterness. Holmes' aversion to the Keltic spirit is 
quite unconcealed. But with the valuation, both ancient and modern, of 
the so-called Commentarii, we shall deal in the proper place later on.] 



The Helvetii 



As for these, they were Kelts no less than those farther 
west. Their military prowess Csesar, in a mode of rea- 
soning repeated elsewhere, makes dependent upon their 
border wars carried on with their German neighbors. As 
to Aquitania, a non-Keltic part of Gaul, he errs enor- 
mously as to its area. 

Orgetorix was the man most prominent among the Hel- 
vetii, which means among their aristocrats. The sworn 
agreement which he had effected, called upon the knightly 
class alone. His motives for a tribal migration, we are 
told, were partly ambition, partly the impossibility of ex- 
pansion. Of the geographical barriers, Csesar leaves un- 
named the strongest of all, the Alps, as though Italy were, 
at all events, beyond their computations. 

Their planning and measures must have covered at least 
two years, and Csesar's account agrees well with Cicero's 
relation above ("Att.," 1, 19, 2). Orgetorix is to us an 
impressive exemplar of the Keltic nobleman, and of the 
feudal character of that society and politics. He gives a 
daughter to the ^Eduan nobleman Dumnorix; in fact, he 



CESAR IN 58 B.C. 93 

makes private alliances with aspiring leaders elsewhere, 
he makes promises contingent upon his own advancement : 
but all these pacts (a Keltic triumvirate) were secret. 
Their uncovering cost Orgetorix his life, although he 
could muster ten thousand retainers. The plans of tribal 
migration meanwhile even so go forward. The resolution 
to burn all dwellings reveals the decisive character of a 
movement long entertained. With them migrate con- 
tiguous populations of upper Rhine. Clearly they did 
not desire to pass westward by any route farther north 
than Gfeneva^ because these regions farther north then 
rested under the shadow, at least, of dread Ariovist. 
They relied to some extent, also, upon the soreness of the 
AUobroges on the upper Rhone. Geneva then was en- 
tirely on the left bank of the impetuous Rhone, which 
river constituted the frontier at that point. 

Caesar arrived in Geneva in spring. On April 13,^ he 
hoped his new levies would be at his disposal, and so pro- 
crastinated in his reply to the Helvetii. In the mean- 
time he constructed defences at certain points on the left 
bank of the Rhone (downstream), and these proved 
strong enough to defeat all efforts of the Helvetii to 
pass to the left bank. Therefore, with the mediation of 
Dumnorix, the Helvetii made an agreement with the 
Sequani (in later Burgundy), peaceably to pass north- 
west through their territory. Csesar now (1, 10) heard 
(for the first time ?) that the Helvetii intended ultimately 
to settle in Saintonge, north of Bordeaux, and thus 
(s^c) threaten the security of the Roman frontier. Here 
we are fairly aghast at the speed of his movements. 
He journeys back across the Alps (he says in Italiam') 
to Aquileia, on the upper Adriatic. In this region there 
were three legions : ^ in his Cisalpine province he enrolled 
two legions. Now the three of Aquileia and the one in 

1 Then identical with May 2 of the solar year. 

2 Probably Nos. VII, VIII, IX. 



94 ANNALS OF CESAR 

Provence are the four legions given him by the Lex 
Vatinia. To these he added ^ two others, XI and XII. 
And the one he found ready in the Transalpine was prob- 
ably X, afterwards so famous. Caesar himself probably 
began this numbering, and thus created, in a way, a cer- 
tain personality, type, identity, and perpetuity ; but this 
innovation, I believe, much more served the imperial 
aspirations of Caesar himself. Factors were gradually 
wrought, more and more proof against mere civic senti- 
ments. 

Ctesar, hastening back the whole length of North Italy 
from Adriatic to Mt. Cenis, crossed the Alps somewhere 
west of Turin and marched toward Lyon, thus leaving 
his province of Narbonensis, certainly iniussu populi Bo- 
mani aut senatus. The Helvetii meanwhile had reached 
the commonwealth of the ^dui (the country of Autun), 
the ' brothers ' ^ of the Roman people. The understanding 
with Dumnorix did not shelter their country from the 
ravages of the migrating nation. Caesar now saw his 
opportunity, when the Helvetii were crossing the Saone 
(Sauconna displaced the earlier name Arar). He pounced 
upon the last quarter of the host, the Tigurini (Zurich), 
before noon, early in the day, when they were off their 
guard. Then Csesar in one day, with all his forces, crossed 
to the west bank of the Saone, an operation in which the 
moving Kelts had used twenty. 

Then came envoys from the Helvetii, headed by the old 
chieftain Divico (Divine), who, in 107 B.C., before Marius' 
command even, had been at the head of the Tigurini, in 
the vast migration of Cimbri and Teutons. ^ This discom- 
fiture of nearly half a century before Caesar brings out to 
stir Roman feelings. Divico in 58 must have been about 

1 'Privato sumptu ' (?), Suet., 24. 

2 They were " allies " of Rome as early as 121 b.c. Liv., 61. 

3 When the consul L. Cassius "in finibus Allobrogum cum exercitu 
csesus est." Liv., 65. 



CJESAR IN 58 B.C. 95 

eighty. Caesar's citation of the immortal gods, with the 
ancient lesson of their envy and of their temporary nurture 
of human pride — should we take it all quite seriously ? 
These are the basic chants in Jj^schylus and Herodotus, 
essential parts of Csesar's youthful culture. 

Now follows the decisive part of the Helvetian rela- 
tion. Csesar moved beliind the Helvetii for fifteen days, 
so closely that they could not forage freely, he maintain- 
ing a distance of five to six miles. Meanwhile he himself 
suffered from lack of grain : even fodder was scant. His 
own supplies were on the Saone, but he had left that river. 
Finally, he charged two of the leaders of the ^dui, one 
of them being Liscus, then chief magistrate (or vergohref), 
with bad faith. Here he learns, probably for the first 
time, of the deep fissure in the commonwealth of the 
iEdui ; viz., of the Proromanists and the Antiromanists. 
The latter, while actually in Caesar's camp, gave the Hel- 
vetian host every information and moral support. There- 
upon, in a private conference with the vergohret^ Csesar 
learned more exactly the actual domestic situation among 
the ^dui, particularly of the feud among the brothers, 
the Druid Divitiacus and the aspirant for monarchy, Dum- 
norix.^ One learns (1, 18) how ambitious noblemen rose, 
or planned to rise, among the Kelts. Also that they had 
customs taxes, or a tariff, at the frontiers. The coming 
of the Romans had enhanced, of course, the prestige of 
the Druid. But for the latter, Caesar would have put to 
death or severely checked his younger brother — perhaps 
half-brother. Dumnorix is warned, and thereafter sur- 
rounded with spies. 

Soon after this conference, C«sar planned to strike the 
migratory host in front and rear; but this design was 
defeated by an elderly subofficer, who blundered through 

1 On coins: " Z>M6noreiaj " ('Great King'). It is characteristic of 
Holmes that he calls him "the ^duan demagogue." What would he 
call, e.g.^ Queen Budicca? 



96 ANNAI.S OF C^SAR 

nervousness and poor eyesight. There were no field- 
glasses then. 

Now Caesar quit the Helvetii, and marched toward the 
chief town of the ^dui, situated on Mt. Beauvray (two 
thousand feet above sea), Bihraete (Beavertown). At 
this point the Helvetii, in their turn, changed their line 
of march and moved on behind Caesar's army. Caesar 
gave them battle, having covered a slope with his suc- 
cessive lines. Personally he staked his life on the 
issue. Omitting the details of strategical points (for 
which technical treatment would be requisite), we ob- 
serve that at the critical point the first and second line 
wheeled and made a frontal attack, while his third line, 
at a different angle, charged upon the Boi and Tulingi, 
who had attacked them upon the (shieldless) right 
flank. 

The battle (probably in May-June) lasted from one to 
seven, afternoon. All night there was fighting at the 
bulwark of carts. One hundred eighty thousand souls 
escaped northward to the Lingones (^Langres). After a 
necessary delay of three days, Caesar marched after them, 
when they surrendered at discretion, all excepting six 
thousand men, the clan Verhigenus. 

Caesar treated the survivors of the Helvetii gently 
enough and placed them in their former territory, which 
he did not wish to be occupied by the Germans. These, 
viz., the Alemanni, did come in, but much later. Out of 
the entire migration but one hundred and ten thousand 
souls, about thirty per cent of the original number, sur- 
vived. The original lists of the Helvetii were written in 
Greek characters. 
\ An ordinary commander might have considered these 
successes enough for one summer, but Caesar determined 
to settle in this very first year, also, the problem of Ger- 
man power on the left bank of the Rhine. 



CiESAR IN 58 B.C. 97 

Ariovist 

The relations of this Suebian leader to the ^dui whom 
he had defeated, and to the Sequani who had called him 
over, Cyesar must have known, even before he was informed 
by the leaders of the ^dui and by the gestures or the pro- 
found silence of the Sequani. Commanders like Pyrrhus 
generally rule there where they have vanquished. To the 
Roman consciousness the Cimbri and Teutons would recur 
readily enough. Ariovistus appears, in Caesar's relation, 
as haughty and defiant, as not very greatly impressed by 
Caesar's defeat of the Helvetii. Twice Caesar communi- 
cated with him : the first time Caesar asked for a confer- 
ence ; at the last he sent Keltic envoys with his demands. 
Now Caesar did not at all begin the negotiations with the 
request that Ariovistus should retreat across the Rhine, 
but merely that further migration should cease. Also, 
he insisted that positive autonomy be restored to the two 
Keltic states, whose rivalry had brought the German Herzog 
across the Rhine. 

The rejoinder of Ariovistus was based on those military 
and political axioms which Rome herself, at this very time, 
held and pursued. 

The further news (1, 37) that a hundred clans of SueW^ 
had assembled on the eastern bank of the Rhine and were 
actually attempting to cross (somewhere about Coblenz), 
was very disquieting to Caesar. Next, both forces moved 
upon Vesontio, on the Doubs (Besangon), in the territory 
of the unwilling clients of the German leader, much nearer 
to the Rhine. Caesar, however, outmarched the Suebi, for 
he pushed on by night and day. And now followed a 
demoralization of the legions from fear and dread of the 
Germans. Caesar hesitated not, when he composed his rela- 
tion, to place the responsibility upon the young aristocrats 
who attended his headquarters. We note that the com- 

^ = Schweifer (Rovers), as Mommsen suggests. 



98 ANNALS OF CESAR 

mander accomplished the moral rehabilitation of the esprit 
du corps not at all by a general appeal ^ to the rank and 
file in an address (^contio}, but in a council of war to which 
all the centurions were invited. The Cimbri and Teutons, 
no less than the recent wars of Spartacus, did admirable 
service in his exposition and appeal, terminating in the 
adroit reference to the X legion. The resultant revolu- 
tion in the spirit of all the troops betokens the genius of 
a great commander. 

Now Ariovist himself asked for a conference. At this, 
Csesar repeated his demands. The German retorted with 
a general glorification of his own career. He refused, 
however, quite definitely, to submit to any impairment of 
the tribute money (from Sequani), such as would follow 
if he heeded the Roman demands. On the whole, he was 
not less defiant and contumacious than before. It sounds 
odd, also, that Ariovistus should have been virtually tam- 
pered with 2 by C8esar's political enemies at Rome : bluntly : 
if Ariovistus were to slay Csesar, he (1, 44) would do a 
favor ' to many aristocrats and leading men of the Roman 
people ' — Csesar does not say, of the senate, or of the 
optimates. 

The German chieftain as well as the Roman dynast 
were perfectly aware that thei/^ too, were engaged in a 
momentous struggle, of which Gaul was the prize. 

After two days, Ariovist, somewhat sobered, perhaps, 
asked for a further conference. This time Csesar declined, 
but compromised by sending two Romanized Gauls as his 
envoys. The situation had been completely reversed. 

In extreme southern Alsace was fought the decisive 

1 Dio Cassias (38, 35) reproduces and incidentally elucidates Csesar's 
account : " with the body of the troops he held no intercourse." Dio, as 
often, essays a psychological pragmatism. As for the speech, in Dio, it 
is Dionesque, i.e., a study in Thucydides, with all that apparatus of facti- 
tious antitheses and balanced periods. 

2 This heavy charge against the Optimates would hardly have been 
published before 51 b.c. 



C^SAR IN 58 B.C. 99 

battle which seems for several centuries to have deter- 
mined the overlordship of northwestern Europe, as be- 
tween the Germans and the Romans : eventually the 
Franks and Anglo-Saxons won that suzerainty. 

The long delay of Ariovist in his accepting battle from 
Caesar was due to a Germanic superstition : their wise 
women declared that it would not do to have a battle 
before the new moon. 

The reserve, or third line of Csesar, led by young 
Crassus (husband of Ca3cilia Metella), decided the des- 
perate struggle, — restored it and turned it into a rout, 
until stopped by a stream : what Caesar calls the Rhine 
perhaps was the 111. 



The pulse-beat of politics in the capital in this year 
escapes us : Cicero was in exile, and so could not write 
any letters from Rome. 

Clodius t^umphed there to some extent. He appeared 
as the plebs' own statesman, making grain distribution 
subject no longer even to a nominal payment ; destroying 
the abodes which had known Cicero in town and country ; 
giving, further, freer play to the political clubs in Rome, 
which in effect we might better call " gangs," great and 
well-organized powers these at elections and electioneer- 
ing. Furthermore, as one who had triumphed over social 
and moral law, he formally legislated out of Roman life 
that stern force of old, the mark of the censors, virtually 
pruning the great office away from the body politic. 

To the naked eye, he was ruler of Rome. As a mat- 
ter of fact, he had made trades for a free hand with 
the two consuls of the year. Of these, Calpurnius Piso 
had recently become Caesar's father-in-law : he had been 
put in by the latter. Aulus Gabinius, the other consul, 
was a henchman and a creature of Pompey's, his noted ser- 
vitor of the bill granting the Pirate campaign. Cato was 



100 ANNALS OF CESAR 

removed from Rome in this year, not indeed into exile, 
but to settle the finances of the new domain of the day, 
the island of Cyprus. 

Here, I believe, we detect the hand of Csesar behind the 
scenes. Clodius here was merely the agent of that dynast. 
For it was Cato (Plut., " Cat. Min.," 33), who had prophe- 
sied, probably in the senate, in 59, when Caesar's imperium 
was given him, that ' with their own votes they would 
place Caesar in an impregnable position.' And no matter 
what one's sympathies or antipathies may be as regards 
Csesar present and future, Cato was not merely stubborn, 
but keen and profound in the correctness of his political 
penetration and prevision. 



CHAPTER IX) 

C^SAK IN 57 B.C. 

The campaigns of 58 had clearly shown Caesar's will 
and policy in two very important matters. In the first 
place, he would not permit any shifting or rearing of new 
power of Gauls among Gauls. And also his acute mind 
had clearly perceived the necessity of keeping the Ger- 
mans, the most formidable of the barbarous races of north- 
ern Europe, on the easterly bank of the Rhine. 

Caesar now took the field, certainly without any justifi- 
cation of real provocation or danger to the Roman empire, 
— took the field, I say, to add the north to his own domain. 

First, Caesar increased his forces (without consent of 
home government) by enrolling two new legions in the Po 
country. He then had eight in all, a measure causing keen 
displeasure to all men in public life who looked to Cato 
for guidance. The Belg^e^ were the objective point of 
his new campaign. In his preparations he calmly assumed 
that the northerly communities of Gaul proper would ac- 
cept and perform his orders, that the Senones^ e.g. (Sens), 
would keep him informed of the movements of their north- 
erly neighbors. The Hemi, between upper Marne and 
Aisne (Rheims), soon got into, or were manipulated into, 
that position through which the Romans accomplished so 
much in the extension of their empire ; the Remi became 
favored subjects, favored above the others, the dominant 
among the obedient because first to obey. 

In the main the Belgae were the communities between 
Seine and lower Rhine. Was it Ctesar or the Remi who 

^Belg(B= Tumentes (Holder): The ^Swollen,'' i.e., The Proud; cf. 
Bulge, Billow. 

101 



102 ANNALS OF CiESAR 

designated the movement for a Belgian coalition as insan- 
ity {furor') ? Again we observe that valor and reputation 
in northwestern Europe was computed and rated from 
association with, or identity with, the Germanic stock. — 
But to return. Soon Caesar himself was called upon to 
'save ' a town of the Belgse, Bihrax.^ 

Csesar at first was cautious, and kept his legionaries 
from these famous warriors : meanwhile he resorted to 
engineering defences, putting the Axona (Aisne) in his 
rear. The Belgse soon were tired of joint operations, after 
having made a vain effort to dislodge Ccesar by gaining a 
position south of the river in his rear. After this discom- 
fiture, they scattered to their various homes and cantons. 
As for the proud and warlike Bellovaci (Beauvais), Csesar 
had isolated them by sending the ^Edui against them, 
^dui and Remi were used by him precisely in the same 
way in which one of his most brilliant pupils. Napoleon, 
used the ' Rheinbund ' against his German foes. 

When Caesar realized that the departure of the general 
levies of the coalition was also a dissolution of the coali- 
tion, he pressed after them and inflicted heavy losses all 
day long. Now C?esar took in hand one canton at a time. 
First, the Suessiones (Soissons). He arrived before their 
town of Noviodunum (Newton), and during the next night 
the contingent of the tribe arrived from the dissolution on 
the Aisne. 

A regular siege was now undertaken by Ciesar, but the 
townspeople, deeply impressed by the rapid execution of 
Caesar's siege-works, made their submission. That was 
one canton. Next, Ceesar moved upon the town of the 
Bellovaci, Bratuspantium,^ some twenty miles to the west. 
Here one could see how the exhibition of power conquers 
men. The inhabitants did not even await the operation 
of the Romans' siege-works, but immediately pleaded for 

1 ' Beaverton ' (Zeuss) . Vieux Laon, east of Rheims. 

2 = ' Valley of judgment,' Pictet. 



C^SAR IN 57 B.C. 103 

mercy. Here they were supported by the good offices of 
the powerful Druid : incidentally we learn that the lead- 
ers for independence, whose wickedness is not very clear 
to us, had fled across the channel to Britain. So these 
Bellovaci were spared (ch. 15), not for their own sake, 
nor that of international law, nor humanity, nor religion, 
but for the sake of the ^duans. Six hundred hostages 
were taken away, the chief device of pacification. The 
third canton was that of the Ambiani (Amiens), who sur- 
rendered at once and completely. 

Not so the Nervii^ to the northeast, on the Sahis 
(Sambre), whose warlike prowess, as usual, is derived 
and deduced from the fact that they kept themselves im- 
mune from the traders and from the allurements of south- 
ern luxuries, such as wine. They were angry at the other 
Belgse for abandoning the cause of freedom. Never be- 
fore, and rarely afterward, was Caesar so completely taken 
by surprise, as on the southerly bank of the Sambre,^ 
by the hawk-like swoop upon his troops, when these were 
on the point of breaking ranks to build the Roman camp 
for that night, nay, when some had actually begun to 
work at it. The efficacy (almost automatic) of Roman 
drill and tactics, no less than the presence of the various 
subcommanders, with their several legions, were of incal- 
culable importance in saving the Roman army. No time 
for stripping the leather cases from the shields, none even 
to put on helmets, no systematic battle lines, no unity of 
legions even in some cases, no survey of the ground as a 
whole, a confused image of wild forces : Csesar's own 
camp taken, while others of his own troops drove some of 
the Nervii into the Sambre ; here vigorous advance, there 
a rout of grooms and camp followers. 

Every centurion perished in the fourth cohort of legion 
XII (centurions were masters and exemplars of swords- 
manship, personal valor, and tactics). Of the other cen- 
1 Somewhere between Charleroi and Namur. 



104 ANNALS OF CiESAR 

turions, few had any more strength left to fight on, while 
dense masses of ever new warriors were darting to the top 
of the sloping bank. At this critical point the imperator 
personally took charge. He cheered and fired the front, 
called on the centurions name for name, and promptly 
widened the front of the maniples, to provide elbow-room 
for Roman swordsmanship. To fight in Ms sight was, for 
the common legionaries, the supreme incentive. Mean- 
while the two legions who had brought up the rear of the 
moving army on that day, came upon the scene on the 
double-quick. The Xth legion returned across the Sambre 
from the capture of the enemies' camp, and materially 
helped not only to restore the battle, but to give it a deci- 
sive turn toward victory. The last stand for freedom on 
that evening of the Nervii (c. 27) is related by Ctesar with 
expressions of high admiration. As for the result of that 
desperate conflict, Ciesar says that the race and name of 
the Nervii were all but extinguished. We may readily 
perceive that an orderly retreat, with a substantial salva- 
tion of strength, was unknown to that warfare. Then the 
older men and the women and children surrendered. Fig- 
ures are here given : From sixty they were reduced to 
three " senators," from sixty thousand lighting men to five 
hundred ! This was the statement witli which the Nervii 
accompanied their petition for mercy. 

For once, as a matter of deliberate policy in this case, 
Csesar puts forward the matter of mercy. 

Caesar next took in hand the town of the Aduatuci^ the 
fifth community of the Belgse to surrender. But these 
(c. 29) were descendants of the Cimbri and Teutons, 
filled with that curious Germanic consciousness which in 
that time rendered haughty and defiant the non-Keltic 
cantons of northwestern Europe. The gradual rearing 
of Roman siege-works at first filled them with scornful 
amusement: the smaller stature of the Italians, too, they 
judged wrongly. But when the towers began to move, 



CiESAR IN 57 B.C. 105 

they changed their tone. They submitted, retaining one- 
third of their arms, and then, after midnight, assaulted 
the Roman siege lines. But even for such a contingency 
Ceesar had made provision. Beacons promptly indicated 
the critical spots. The Aduatuci fought with desperate 
bravery, but it was a hopeless struggle; four thousand 
were slain, the rest driven back into the town. The next 
day all the survivors were sold into slavery : the slave 
merchants, always at hand, returned the figures as fifty- 
three thousand. The funds so gained, and their ultimate 
destiny, were, indeed, as we saw above, hedged about by 
the very precise specifications of Csesar's own Lex Julia 
Repetundarum. But Csesar never accounted, as he would 
have been compelled to, had he become a private person. 
From despatches of young Crassus, Caesar learned that 
the Atlantic cantons, from the mouth of the Loire north- 
west, had submitted 'to the Roman people.' What wrong 
had they done to bring upon themselves this fate ? Was 
the Lex lulia Repetundarum so much waste paper ? 



[The first words of "B. G.," 2, 35, are curious. 'His rebus omni 
Gallia pacata' : (1) did Caesar believe it at the time ? Had he so reported 
to the senate ? That appears improbable from Cicero's support of the next 
year in De Provinciis Consularibus. (2) Had Caesar formally received 
the submission of all the Gallic states at that time ? (3) If Caesar wrote 
the whole account consecutively somewhere in 51, or thereabouts, would 
he have written in this way ? This is one problem. The other, concern- 
ing the Nervii, resembles it. Three years later, in 54-53, during the au- 
tumn and winter, the Nervii made a new rising : they appear there as 
powerful enough to send commands to five vassal tribes ("B. G.," 5, 39, 
1) : " Qui omnes sub eorum imperio sunt" : why not erantf Before the 
end of winter, early in 53 e.g., he compelled the Nervii (or some of them) 
to give him hostages. In the national levy of 52, their contingent is fixed 
by Vercingetorix as six thousand men. (7, 75, 3.) 

The way in which Dio (39, 3) reports the battle on the Sahis is quite 
instructive. Did he use Caesar's relation, or Livy's (104) much briefer 
report ? At all events, Caesar's fourteen chapters are greatly compressed 
by Dio, or in Dio : " then, when even then they charged down (sic) upon 
him unexpectedly, at the point where Caesar himself was, they turned 
about and fled; but with the greater part of their army they proved 



106 ANNALS OF CESAR 

stronger, and took the Roman camp on the first charge (avro^oel). But 
he, having perceived this, for he had already advanced some distance 
pursuing the routed ones, turned back (all this was really done by La- 
bienus) and, seizing them in the stockade while they were making loot, 
surrounded them and cut them to pieces. And having done this, he had 
no gi-eat further task in subduing the Nervii." Book 1 (or the cam- 
paigns of Bk. 1), Dio relates much more fully, but also he slips in 
everywhere explanations of his own. 

Livy's " Epitome," 104, is inaccurate in relating that Caesar checked 
the panic at the beginning of the Ariovistus campaign adlocutione exer- 
citus. Dio here was very precise, and consciously so. 

As for the Nervian episode, it duly stands out even in the compression 
of Livy's "Epitome": "contra Nervios, unam ex his civitatibus cum 
magno discrimine pugnavit eamque gentem delevW'' : Caesar's figures fol- 
low, except that for the five hundred of his text we have three hundred. 

Plutarch's account ("Caes.," 20, 3) is odd: as though the Belgae had 
been subjected before, but had revolted : iirel 8^ BiXyas ijKovae . . . 
d(pe<TTdvai. Otherwise, it appears as a hurried summary of Caesar's own 
relation. — His detail is greatest precisely where his interest is greatest; 
viz., in the Nervian battle, he giving the figures of the survivors with the 
utmost exactness. 

When Plutarch indulges in pragmatizing reflections, one is not posi- 
tively certain whether Livy colors here, or whether they are the children 
of his own deeper valuation : but whatever that may be, we take notice 
that moral condemnation prevails over the admiration of success, and of 
strength and power — no Mommsen, nor Hegel: "and in the course of 
all the rest of his campaigns he escaped the perception of Pompey, at one 
time in turn subduing the enemy with arms furnished by his fellow-citi- 
zens, at another time with the money which came from the enemy, cap- 
turing his fellow-citizens and subduing them to his power."] 

At Rome, Pompey 's friends and servitors became active 
that something as a balancing of power be done for the 
Only One. The Equilibrium was in danger. Something 
must be done for Pompey. Wars there were none for him 
this time. In September, too, the achievements of Csesar's 
northern campaign had probably been officially communi- 
cated to the senate. And it was early in September, a 
few days after the jubilant reentry of Rome by the re- 
called exile Cicero, when the Pompeian faction demanded 
that the entire care of the grain supply ^ be given to Pom- 
pey for five years, 'in the whole world.' Grain was high, 

1 'Cura annonae,' "Att.," 4, 1, 6 ; Dio, 39, 9. 



CiESAR IN 57 B.C. 107 

and there was a general outcry in the capital. — Notice the 
five years' period for Pompey. Cicero made the motion 
in the senate. One of the servitors, indeed, of Pompey 
had actually proposed, for this new power, control of all 
public moneys, and authority in all the provinces greater 
than that of the actual provincial governors. Pompey 
was one of those figures in history who like to have great- 
ness thrust on themselves. Of course, there was no objec- 
tion from Caesar's servitors. The fifteen days' thanksgiving 
for Caesar's northern victories was likewise moved in the 
senate by Cicero, somewhat later in that autumn.^ 



When Caesar set out for Italy, i.e.^ for his Cisalpine 
province, he determined to clear permanently, for trade 
and traders, certain routes over the Alps, particularly 
where now the Arve rushes northward toward Geneva. 
Oetodurus is near the present site of Martigny in the 
Valais. The attack by the mountaineers upon the garri- 
son of Galba ("B. G.," 3, 2), not a full legion, seemed to 
the natives a plausible enterprise. The feeling of Rome's 
power and resources had not yet sunk very deeply into 
the Keltic consciousness at large. They hoped, also, to 
recover their children. How desperate their resolution, 
when they risked even the death of these hostages ! 

As long as the legion was on the defensive in the stock- 
ade, strength and endurance were wearing steadily away. 
The last resource, a sally, curiously enough, 'came not from 
the plans of the legatus and commander of legion XII, but 
from a centurion and a military tribune. Complete suc- 
cess crowned this change of strategy. More than ten 
thousand Kelts were slain, and the rest disappeared in 
the Alpine valleys. But Galba thought it wiser to march 

^ Cic, " De Provin. Consular.," 26, ' supplicationem quindecim dierum 
decrevi sententia mpa.' (For Pompey's honor, when the death of Mith- 
ridates was reported in 63 b.c, but ten days had been voted.) Att., 
"B. G.,"2, 35. 



108 ANNALS OF CESAR 

down to Geneva, and take his winter quarters within the 
Roman province. 

[All this happened in the later autumn of 57 b.c. Why does not Caesar 
make it a part of the second commentarius? But this was his manner. 
He threw into the next commentarius all the events which were subse- 
quent to the larger operations (of the open season).] 

The last item of this year for our Annals occurred in 
Rome, in the senate, in December, near the holiday season 
of the Saturnalia. Riots everywhere, i.e.^ artificially or- 
ganized so that some men in public life shunned going to 
senate, even : Clodius, using his organizations to intimi- 
date and inhibit things or men he disliked, checked by 
Annius Milo, champion of the Conservatives, with exactly 
the same weapons.^ Pompey was away on his grain-com- 
mission. A senator attacked Caesar's Campanian land 
assignment.^ (One sees that the triumvirate was, indeed, 
powerful but not omnipotent.) Evidently the assign- 
ments there had not yet been executed. Cicero rather 
enjoyed the attack. Deep silence accompanied the long 
discourse. Formerly this topic was accompanied by abu- 
sive exchange of angry words. Now silence of the tomb. 
No vote taken. 



iCf. "Att.,"4, 3. 

2 Quint., "Fratr.," 2, 1, 1. 



CHAPTER X 

CESAR IN 56 B.C. 

Ptolemy Auletes had been compelled to flee from his 
capital of Alexandria. His agents in Rome were active 
with money and notes. Who will get this job of jobs ? 
What loot ! How was the king to be restored to his loving 
subjects ?i What does Pompey want ? Every one studied 
his servitors: for he was mute or mysterious. Cicero 
dined with him : no suggestion of an itching palm. ' But 
when I see his close friends, senators or knights, I see 
clearly, a matter manifest to every one, that that whole 
job has been long ago bought and sold by definite indi- 
viduals, not against the wall of the king himself, and his 
councillors.' Was it at this time that Pompey and Csesar 
acquired the enormous claims on the king's purse, still 
due when Csesar appeared on the sands of Egypt in 48? 

Further on, in February, Pompey's life at Rome was 
made wretched by the organized insults heaped upon him 
in public by Clodius. Pompey again was bitterly attacked 
in the senate by the man who was as scrupulously honor- 
able and conscientious as Clodius was recklessly wicked 
and shamelessly brave, viz., by Cato. And Pompey was 
supremely dignified, keenly sensitive, but no debater. 
Pompey, in that spring, was positively alarmed ; ^ so Cicero 
inferred, although Pompey's secretiveness and reserve 
were well known : in fact, Pompey was as one who had 
no palpable support. The Campanian land matter, too, 
was discussed again early in April. ^ At this point, and 



1 Cic, 


"Earn.," 1, 1; 1,2. 


2Cic., 


"Earn.," 1, 6b, 1. 


3 Cic, 


"Earn.," 1, 9,8. 




109 



no ANNALS OF CAESAR 

in the pressure of that situation, Pompey determined to 
meet Caesar, while he (Pompey) was on his way to Sar- 
dinia. And so came about the portentous political con- 
ference, due, in the main, not so much to Csesar, least of 
all to any genuine apprehension on the part of Csesar 
directed at Cicero.^ 

Luca, not far from Pisse, is just north of the political 
boundary of Italy as then constituted, but in Caesar's 
province ; the letter of the law was preserved. There 
then was held in this same month of April a private or 
secret conference,^ as the ancient historians call it. In 
one way it was very far from private : there were so many 
magistrates or other men in public life (cum imperio) pres- 
ent, that there A\*ere one hundred and twenty lictors on 
the ground. It was the sensation of the political world. 
But secret, no doubt, were the discussions, and secret for 
the present were the stipulations entered into at the time, 
but revealed, by and by, in the next consular elections 
and various senatus considta. 

L. Domitius Ahenobarbus (brother-in-law of Cato), 
then, and to the end of his life,^ one of the bitterest ene- 
mies of Caesar, was a consular candidate for 55 B.C., and,* 
foolishly enough, threatened openly that, as consul, he 
would deprive Ccesar of his armies. Cato, and all who be- 
lieved in Cato, saw that here was the very sinew of his 
power. And so it was. Why should any one (becoming 
ecstatic with Mommsen about some fancied cultural mis- 
sion of the towering proconsul) fail to see it ? 

To defeat Domitius and his supporters, the three mem- 
bers of the Great Pact settled the immediate future of 
Roman politics in this way : Pompey and Crassus to be 

1 See "Att.," 4, 5. Seriously speaking, Caesar always considered 
Cicero facilis. 

2 L. Lange, 3, 328. Pint, " Cses.," 21. 
8 At Pharsalos, June, 48. 

* Suet., "Cses.," 24. 



C^SAR IN 56 B.C. Ill 

chosen consuls for 55 B.C.; Caesar's provincial power to be 
extended by another period of five years, with incidental 
immunities and advantages. At Luca there were more 
than two hundred senators (Plut., "Cses.," 21): looking 
for crumbs or for clews, or what? or getting their orders ? 
And Cicero's cooperation was pledged through his brother 
Quintus. 

In private, indeed, and before the mirror of his deeper 
sentiments, poor Cicero made a somewhat wry face^ at 
this new alliance (^nova coniunetio') : but it was exile, and 
a frame of mind not far removed from self-destruction, 
out of which he had returned less than a year before. 
Home once more, he had bitterly felt the political impo- 
tence, nay, the indifference and envy, of his aristocratic 
false friends. 'But since,' — so he wrote to his bosom 
friend, — ' since those men who have no power, do not 
wish to love me, let us strive to he esteemed hy those who 
have power (viz., Ciesar and the other two). You will say: 
" I wish you had done so long ago." I know you desired 
it, and that I have been a genuine donkey. But it is time 
now that I be loved by myself, since I cannot in any wise 
be loved by those people . . .' (the optimates). Soon after 
May 15, 56, a S. C. was passed, which gave to Csesar pay 
from the public treasury for the four legions which, on 
his own responsibility, the proconsul had levied among 
his old clients, the Transpadanes.^ Thus Caesar got 
back with interest the money which he had spent at 
Luca (Plut., "Ctes.," 21): and now the presence there of 
the more than two hundred members of the Great Coun- 
cil becomes very much more luminous to the readers of 
this biography. 

As for the ten legati voted to Caesar at the same time, 
there was a peculiar significance in that measure. There 

i"Att.," 4, 5. 

2 This grant does not invalidate the phrase, private sumptu, of 
Suet., 24. 



112 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

was in this the definite conception of a conquest consum- 
mated, of a new province ranged in the empire. ^ 

And so even Cicero appeared as one who helped to carry 
into execution the private agreements of Luca. His noted 
speech in the senate ('on the Consular Provinces') was 
probably held early in June, 56 B.C. The consul, L. Mar- 
cius Philippus, presided. (Cf. § 21.) The older I grow 
the less I am inclined to accept at their face value the 
public utterances of politicians, even when their name is 
Cicero. Was he really converted in his heart to genuine 
admiration of, and trust in, the governor of the north- 
west ? 

Is the following sincere ? " Or can I (§ 22) be a per- 
sonal enemy of this man, through whose huUetms,^ reputa- 
tion, messengers, my ears, day by day, ring again with 
unheard of names of peoples, tribes, and places ? " — Poor 
Cicero ! Once more the scholar in politics, the cultural 
enthusiast, tied to the chariot of the politicians. But we 
must select a few passages which, in a manner, reflect the 
year 36 B.C. 

" Therefore ^ he fought decisively and with consummate 
fortune with the most intrepid and greatest tribes of the 
Germans and Helvetians (odd summary of 58-57), the rest 
he has thoroughly frightened, constrained, tamed, trained 
them to obey the commands of the Roman people, and ter- 
ritories and nationalities which hitherto no books, no 
human utterance, no rumor, had brought within our ken, 
these our generalissimo and our army and the weapons of 
the Roman people have traversed. A footpath, merely, to 
Gaul was held before, gentlemen of the senate : the other 

1 Cic, "Phil.," 12, 28 : 'bellis confectis decern legatis permitti solet 
more maiorum.' Cf. "Fam.," 1, 70, 10. 

2 ' litteris ' : Should we not here conceive of that to which Suetonius 
("Cses.," 56) refers: " Epistulse quoque eius ad senatum extant, quas 
primus videtur ad paginas et formam memorialis libelli convertisse, cum 
antea consules et duces nonnisi transversa charta scriptas mitterent." 

3 " De Provin. Consular.," § 33. 



CESAR IN 56 B.C. 113 

parts were held by nationalities either disloyal to our gov- 
ernment, or unknown to it, or assuredly terrible and un- 
civilized and warlike : nationalities which everybody (in 
Rome) eagerly desired to see crushed and tamed ; no one 
reflected profoundly about our own commonwealth, but 
held that Gaul was most deserving of apprehension on the 
part of our own government, but on account of the power 
and great number of those nationalities, no struggle was 
ever had with them collectively. We always turned on 
them only when they challenged us. Now, at last, we 
have accomplished it, that both our own domains and the 
world had the same uttermost point . . . for (§ 34) there 
is nothing beyond the lofty ridge of those mountains 
(the Alps) up to the Atlantic, which Italy will have to 
dread. But still,^ one or two summers (= campaigns), 
either through apprehension, or hope, or chastisement, 
or rewards, or arms, or statutes, can fetter Gaul en- 
tire with bonds enduring forever : but if their state 
of sentiment be left raw and sore, although their power 
be materially impaired, they will rise some day, and 
their strength become fresh once more for renewing the 
war." 

But we, too, must now turn once more from Csesar's 
politics in 56 to Caesar's campaigns of the same year. 

Was the naval campaign now following on the Bay of 
Biscay really a surprise to Caesar ? Did he (^officially) in 
the autumn of 57 really believe that the work was done ? 
The brief report of P. Crassus (" B. G.," 2, 34) merely 
mentions the actual submission of seven maritime can- 
tons : submission made to the youngest of Ciesar's lieu- 
tenants, who had under him one legion and no more, 
legion VII. Did Ciesar really trust the moral results, 
the consequences in the souls of men, of the tremendous 
blows dealt in the east and in the north ? As a matter 

1 Tamen . . . that is : A man might say, why not then terminate Csesar's 
proconsulate ? Why even extend it ? 



114 ANNALS OF CiESAR 

of fact, the communities of the Atlantic border had 
'•accepted^ the sway of the Roman people. 

As for the form or mode of this submission, it had been 
the giving of hostages. Now the retention by the Veneti 
and their neighbors of the Roman envoys sent to demand 
tribute of grain was to be the means of enforcing that 
which (3, 8, 2) these somewhat new and raw subjects of 
the 'Roman People' had most at heart; viz., the restor- 
ing of their own children then held as hostages. Caesar's 
belief that Gallia was paeata manifestly had rested on the 
possession of these hostages. 

Inasmuch as all these things came about during the in- 
clement season (57-56), indeed before a goodly supply of 
grain for the winter quarters had been laid in, then 
Caesar's ' surprise ' was to be dated even before the open- 
ing of the civic year bQ B.C. 

A considerable part of that winter 57-56 was consumed 
by the building of a fleet on the Loire. The oarsmen 
were drafted from the province, by no means from the 
new or newest subjects. The proconsul (3, 9) throws up 
his hands in horror at this fearful breach of International 
Law — this arresting and detaining of the proconsular 
messengers. 

As a matter of fact, the task of subduing the Atlan- 
tic communities proved difficult and severe. The Veneti 
(Vendee) trusted in their commanding knowledge of tides 
and headlands, of winds and weather. As a matter of 
fact, Rome never had had any serious naval operations 
outside of the Mediterranean. Besides, the Veneti had 
attached to their league the cantons of the seaboard north- 
eastwards, inclusive of the Menapii, south of the delta of 
the Rhine. At one thing we marvel : in this list we find 
the Ambiani (^Amiens). 

Csesar's motives for this campaign we find in c. 10, and 
in examining them we fiwdi four considerations of fact and 
one element of policy and design for the future. Would 



C^SAR IN 56 B.C. 115 

a Cato have dared to attack this campaign ? Could any 
adversary of Csesar have charged him with breach of his 
own Lex Julia Repetundarum? He clearly was no longer 
(3, 11) convinced that all Gaul was pacata. So he pro- 
vided for three other operations to be simultaneous with 
his own naval campaign. He sent Labienus into the 
region of the Moselle to keep the Germans on the right 
bank of the Rhine and to discourage any Keltic risings 
in that quarter. Next he sent young Crassus, with twelve 
cohorts and some cavalry, into Aquitania, to prevent any 
reinforcements for the Atlantic cantons from the south. 
Finally, Titurius Sabinus, with three legions^ was to look 
after the Atlantic tribes to the northeast. 

As for himself, he wanted to make sure of the Veneti. 
His admiral was Decimus Brutus, one of his own assassins 
twelve years later. The operations began as soon (3, 12) 
as the season permitted. Caesar laid siege to one town at 
a time ; but he accomplished nothing. For when he had 
reduced one, the inhabitants were found to have flown by 
sea. Their towns lay on points, and at high tide they 
were impregnable by land. Thus a great part of the 
summer went by. Their vessels were adapted to the 
Atlantic ; the galleys of the Romans were not. Caesar's 
description, as all his setting forth of the actualities of 
a given situation, is admirably lucid. 

At last (c. 14) he realized that it was all a question of 
sea power : their fleet must be captured and destroyed, or 
all would be vain. It was the conceit of the scythes which 
enabled the men of Decimus to destroy the tackle of the 
enemy, which fell down with the sails upon the decks of 
the Venetan fleet. 

Thus ended the naval campaign. The fleet had concen- 
trated not only the very spirit of resistance, but, on the 
two hundred and twenty vessels, the very flower of the 
national defence. It was over. They now submitted at 
discretion. But the proconsul was not content to receive 



116 ANNALS OF CESAR 

them as subjects. Their councillors were beheaded and 
the people at large sold into slavery. Ct©sar posed (for 
Cato and others) as defender of the rights of envoys.'^ 
This had been the year in which Csesar had hoped to take 
up the administrative organization of the entire new 
province. 

The separate campaign of Sabinus among the Unelli is 
related in cs. 17-19. The legate won by keeping within 
his stockade and simulating fear. To this ruse, he added 
a further stratagem. 

He had a native Gaul pass over to the patriots and de- 
mean himself among them as a deserter, filling their ears 
with stories of the hopeless and desperate state of things 
within the Roman stockade, — it was all before the Vene- 
tan catastrophe. Sabinus, he said, was anxious to escape 
by night, to come to Csesar's aid. The common Kelts 
were at once carried away by impatience, not to allow so 
certain a success to be neglected. Up the long slope 
they charged, — it was a mile, — armed with brushwood, 
to fill the Roman trench. When they had arrived, still 
burdened and winded, the Roman legions suddenly darted 
out and at them. It was an overwhelming disaster. 



The Aquitani^ during the same summer, were subdued 
by young Crassus, who added to his twelve cohorts, by 
special enrolments, troops from Carcassonne, Toulouse, 
and Narbonne, providing also for such supplies as would 
allow him to operate without drawing upon a hostile 
region. According to Strabo, Aquitania proper, ethnically 
taken, was inhabited by more than twenty minor cantons. 
They were not Kelts but Iberians, and they differed from 
the Gauls proper both in physical characteristics as well 

1 Dr. Rice Holmes, like Mommsen and Froude, not so much an histo- 
rian of Csesar as a partisan, says (p. 66) : "As the Venetian senate were 
responsible for the outrage which had led to the war, every man of them 
was put to death," etc. 



C^SAR IN 56 B.C. 117 

as in speech. First the Sotiates (Lot et Garonne) were 
defeated. These were a people conversant with mines 
and mining. An institution of theirs were the soldurii^ 
sworn brothers in arms. The fall of the town of the 
Sotiates roused the Aquitani to more united efforts. 
They summoned aid even from the southern slope of 
the Pyrenees (2, 23, 3), with good results. For leaders 
were chosen men who had served at home in Spain under 
Sertorius (78-72), and so were familiar, not only with Ro- 
man tactics, but also with Roman strategy: to select good 
positions, to build strong camps, to cut off supplies. 

Crassus had forces too small to extend them, his grain 
supply, too, would not last much longer, and so he deter- 
mined to gain his camjDaign by a pitched battle, which the 
natives, however, declined. No other alternative, there- 
fore, was left to the young subcommander but to assault 
the camp of the Aquitani and Cantabri. With choice 
troops he made a detour and executed an attack on their 
badly guarded rear, gaining an overwhelming victory. 
To-day on the monument of the consort of Crassus, 
Csecilia Metella, in the frieze, on the Appian Way, there 
are still memorials of these achievements. 

Caesar names eleven individual cantons which surren- 
dered to Crassus. — Again Csesar uses (c. 28) the phrase 
' omni G-allia 'pacata^ excepting but the Morini and the 
Menapii. Against these he himself, in tlie latter part of 
the summer, took the field. But they withdrew deeper 
and deeper into dense forests, and the commander-in-chief 
was actually stopped in the middle of his operations by 
the beginning of the inclement season. It was impossible 
to keep the troops under tents any longer amid the driving 
rainstorms of the autumn. 

[Dio (39, 5) presents the struggle of Galba on the Arve in a fashion 
entirely fanciful, with elucidations likewise fanciful. — He resumes the 
military relation at 39, 40, starting with a positive blunder as to the en- 
voys sent to the Veneti : Csesar, he says, wasted the greater part of the 



118 ANNALS OF CiESAR 

open season (tt}v upatav). He goes on to describe the topographical ad- 
vantages of the Venetan towns. He relates Caesar's c. 14 witli blunders 
of his own : " Decimus Brutus came to him with swift ships from the Inner 
Sea" (the Mediterranean). Dio goes on to endow Brutus with motives 
and concerns which Dio had no genuine data to fashion from. The 
details of Brutus' operations seem to be borrowed from Thucydides, 
Dio's chief examplar (c. 42). The scythes (Sopvdp^wavaL) are lugged in, in 
somewhat lame fashion, toward the end of this sketch. Then Caesar's 
stern dealing with the Veneti: Kal avrCiv roi/s Xoyt/xuTaTovs (why not 
^ovXevTCLS ?) 6 Kaiaap airoacfid^as Toi/s dXXovs iirdiK-qae. Of the Menapii 
and Morini withdrawing into the forests, he reproduces is ra Xaa-nbraTa 
tQ)v opQv: why not tQp vXQv? The country is among the flattest in 
Europe. The Titurius Sabinus campaign is told much more precisely. 
Still he will insert his own pragmatizing elucidations : the natives took 
along the bundles of sticks with the hope of burning the Romans up. 
Also he puts the campaign with the Morini before this. In relating the 
campaign in Aquitania he calls the Satiates ' KindTaL ; sheer haste, it 
seems. The matter of taking the camp of the Aquitani from the rear, he 
relates in a fanciful way, as though Crassus had resorted to it only as a 
last device : when he had failed to make any headway in front. 

As for Plutarch, his twenty-first chapter relates the conference of Luca : 
the treatment of Caesar is not merely censorious, but almost cynical and 
contemptuous. Is it not the pencilling of Livy which we see here tran- 
scribed ? The sage of Chaeronea here seems to take his stand with Cato. 
— The campaigns of 56 b.c. are entirely passed over by Plutarch.] 



CHAPTER XI 

C^SAR IN 55 B.C. 

On January 1 the results of the Luca agreement were 
made even more manifest in the inauguration of Pompey 
and Crassus. Csesar's bitter enemy, Domitius, had failed 
at the polls. In the currents of politics in the capital 
Pompey once more seemed to dominate. Once more 
Cicero's senatorial and republican consciousness is in 
torments. As for future lists of consuls, Pompey has 
them checked off in advance in his private note-book 
(" Att.," 4, 8 b, 2). The real plums for the dynasts were 
these (for the consular office was important chiefly for 
its sequence of proconsular government abroad) : for 
Pompey, all Spain : clearly again a balance against 
Caesar's growing power, and that for five years ; and for 
Crassus, Syria and the adjoining countries, with soldiers 
as many as they chose. This was put through as a ple- 
biscitum by the tribune Trebonius, perhaps even soon 
after December 10, 56. (Dio, 39, 33.) Cato, returned 
from Cyprus, stoutly opposed this bill, but was tempora- 
rily arrested by the tribune himself. (Liv., "Per.," 105.) 

In the winter of 56-55 the Usipetes crossed to the left 
bank of the Rhine, which then more and more began to 
pass into the clear light of a great historical frontier. On 
the right bank, the Suebi were all-powerful, a veritable 
hive, from which ever new swarms of warriors issued 
forth, pressing to the westward. The Usipetes and Tenc- 
teri sought an asylum from this pressure. 

To the nationality of the Suebi and to their institu- 
tions, Ctesar devotes three chapters (4, 1-3). On middle 
and lower Rhine the older communities were perpetually 

119 



120 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

in apprehension or positive terror on account of the 
Suebi. 

A curious institution of theirs is that of the Hundred 
Clans, for it was certainly not a growth, but a deliberate 
creation, as all decimal things among men are apt to be. 
So it would seem to have been. Thus, too, the annual levy 
of a hundred thousand men is more easily understood. 
Of course, not a hundred thousand new warriors ; but 
here was a system of rotation in husbandry and warfare. 
The land was held in common : cattle raising prevailed 
over grain crops. Quite extraordinary was their endur- 
ance. Their horses, used without saddles, were of great 
endurance, though small and ugly. Wine was not allowed. 

They affected creating a zone of solitude engirdling 
their own domain, to impress their neighbors. Towards 
the north (opposite Cologne) their neighbors were the 
Ubii. These were more advanced in material civilization, 
having intercourse with traders from the south. The 
Suebi, while they could not dislodge them, made them 
tributary, and greatly reduced their strength and spirit. 
In the same category were the Usipetes and Tencteri, 
These, perpetually troubled by the Suebi, after three 
years moving about, reached the Rhine, the country of 
the Menapii (southern Holland), who failed in prevent- 
ing the crossing of the German migrants. As for the 
Gauls, Caesar did not trust them to repel the Germans. 
In fact, the proconsul feared the fickleness of his new 
subjects : could he, indeed, consider his new province an 
accomplished fact ? 

The Gauls, says he, are very inconstant and curiously 
propense to radical or revolutionary action, on the strength 
often of mere rumor or talk, so impulsively emotional are 
they. They believe, like children, that which they would 
like to have come to pass. In short, Caesar excuses his 
annihilation of the two migratory and homeless tribes by 
his apprehension that they might have been enlisted as 



C^SAR IN 55 B.C. 121 

mercenaries to fight, for the new provincials of his own, 
new wars of freedom. 

He found ^ that his anticipations were confirmed by the 
newest events : Gallic cantons had invited the Germans 
to leave the Rhine, and to move toward the southwest 
and formulate their demands. 

The Germans had entered what is now southeast Bel- 
gium. Their envoys laid their requests before the pro- 
consul, but of course Caesar could not listen to any 
settlement which allowed them to remain, or find any 
domicile whatsoever, on the left bank of the Rhine. He 
suggested to them a closer association with the Ubii. — 
After telling of Meuse (Mosa) and Rhine, of which none 
of his Roman readers, not even Cicero, had any exact 
conception before, Csesar goes on to tell as plausibly as 
possible how he came to destroy the German interlopers. 
They had been moving northward in the valley of the 
Meuse, striving to escape from before Caesar to the north. 
Of course it was, from the outset, quite impossible that 
they should outmarch, or even keep their distance from, 
the Roman legions, for they moved with women and chil- 
dren and all their possessions. 

Besides, they now professed a willingness to heed his 
suggestion ; viz., to find a domicile on the right bank of 
the Rhine, near the Ubii: they asked for a suspension of 
hostilities, or for a cessation of Caesar's northward move- 
ment in their rear — for three days. Their own cavalry 
(says Ccesar') had crossed the Meuse. Now followed that 
by which Caesar tries to justify his subsequent action ; viz., 
the attack by the eight hundred German cavalry still re- 
maining with the main German body — on Caesar's five 
thousand cavalry. More curious still : the eight hundred 
routed the entire five thousand and only abandoned the 
pursuit when they sighted the moving column of the 

1 This whole section is a reply to Cato and to those who followed Cato 
in public life. 



122 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

Roman legions. Hereby, so Ocesar claims, he was relieved 
from all regard for any previous promise, or from any obli- 
gation incurred under such international law as was then 
currently observed. He claims that, as they had broken 
the truce, it would have been the height of folly to wait 
until their main body of cavalry were returned from the 
north. Even more, he now feared the fickleness of the 
Gauls, of whom, by the bye, the bulk of his own ' cavalry ' 
was made up. 

But the Germans had no evil conscience. Early the 
next day their chieftains and elders came into Caesar's 
headquarters to explain the untoward events of the day 
before. Caesar's judgment of their action, morally and 
psychologically speaking, is about the flimsiest passage 
in the famous relation. Most opportune, indeed, was for 
him this arrival, for it enabled him to carry out his bloody 
project with absolute certainty of success. Keeping the 
chiefs in arrest, he hastened after the headless host of the 
migrant tribes. This suddenness was the essence of his 
favorite strategy : the rest was butchery in the main. As 
for the enraged or outraged spirits of his own troops on 
account of the ' perfidy ' of the preceding day, I am not so 
sure. For we have never heard the other side. The story 
of this awful slaughter makes us shudder. Reflect ever so 
little : there had been four hundred and thirty thousand 
souls : how many of the women and children could even 
maintain their flight to the point where the Meuse enters 
the Rhine ? — These unfortunates at least, whose blood 
cried to heaven, would never interfere any more with the 
imposition of sempiterna vincula GalUcef^ 

[Clearly Livy, so severe a judge of Csesar in slighter matters, could not 
have passed this episode so as not to make a condign arraignment of the 
latter. Does Plutarch (c. 22) transcribe him? The sage of Chaeronea, 
whose moral sense (unlike that of Mommsen and the Mommsenians) 
never accepts any soporific from the contemplation of genius and power, 

1 Cicero's phrase,; "De Provin. Consular.," 34. 



CiESAR IN 55 B.C. 123 

weighs Caesar's own account with more care than he is wont to bestow 
upon the commentarW^ of the great captain. . . . All this in the oratio 
obliqua relation of Caesar's own account: '-'■hut Tanusius Gerainus says 
that Cato, when the senate was voting on the strength of the victory to 
have festivals and sacrifices, made a formal motion - that Caesar ought to 
he surrendered to the barbarians, (the senators) thus atoning for the 
breach of the armistice, and turning the curse upon him who was respon- 
sible." Plutarch gives the sum of those cut to pieces as four hundred 
thousand, and adds that the few who succeeded in crossing were received 
by the Sugambri, a German tribe, which act furnished to Caesar a pre- 
text for crossing the Rhine. Plutarch's Ouo-tVas and TepKrepiras seems to 
betoken his hurry of transcription. 

Dio, cool and sane (89, 47), explains and mitigates the alleged breach 
of truce on the part of the Germans, saying (48 initio) that the Elders of 
the Germans condemned, and so, as far as they could, disavowed the action 
of their younger men who were responsible for the cavalry engagement. 
Dio, even if you refuse to read between the lines, condemns Caesar.] 



Mrst Crossing of Rhine 

In this Cgesar essayed no conquest. He desired to 
impress upon the Germans the wisdom of confining them- 
selves to the east bank. Besides, an asylum had been 
given to the cavalry of the slaughtered Usipetes, and 
Tencteri, by the Sugambri. His demand that this cav- 
alry be surrendered was probably not attended by any 
expectation of compliance. Further, the Ubii asked aid 
against the Suebi : we learn with some surprise that the 
former had actually given hostages to Caesar. The Ubii 
promised ships for Caesar's use. But he, without naming 
his chief engineer at all,^ preferred a bridge, which he de- 
scribes very lucidly indeed. The point of crossing was on 

1 Plutarch evidently attempts to translate commentarii by i<prfiJ.€pLSes. 
Symmachus, about 390 a. d., by the bye, uses ' Ephemerides,' too. Clearly, 
Caesar, immediately after the catastrophe, sent a special despatch to the 
senate. 

2 Plutarch's ttjp yv(J)fjL7)v d-irotp-^vaa-daL seems to be a somewhat mechani- 
cal translation of sententiam dicere. Appian, "KeXrtK:?/," 18, has this 
Cato matter likewise as drawn from Tanusius. Both Plutarch and Appian 
seem to have used Livy, not Tanusius, directly. Add Suet., 24. 

3 Possibly Mamurra, whom Caesar loaded with wealth. Cf . Catullus, 29. 



124 ANNALS OF CESAR 

the lower Rhine, not so very far from the German-Dutch 
frontier ; according to some, north of the mouth of the 
Lippe river. The bridge was done in ten days, but the 
Sugambri wisely withdrew into the heart of Westphalia, 
and toward Hannover. Csesar did not long remain on the 
right bank, soon moving into the territory of the Ubii, who 
preferred the sovereignty of Rome to being troubled by the 
Suebi. In all, Csesar stayed eighteen days in Germany. 



First Crossing into Britain 

This enterprise (4, 20) CcBsar held as a reconnoitring 
expedition. Besides, he claims that the Britons had 
aided their Keltic brethren in all (szV) the wars which 
the proconsul had yet waged with the latter. Curious 
that the Gauls knew nothing of the topography of the 
Britons' coast. Nor did the traders give any informa- 
tion. They had reasons. Ceesar himself moved into the 
country of the Moriyii (Pas de Calais). The ignorant 
traders promptly informed the Britons of Csesar's plans. 
Csesar approached Britain near the chalk cliffs of Dover, 
but ke]Dt in the offing, for the brow of the cliff was teem- 
ing with the foe. Therefore he landed seven miles away. 
He disembarked with difficulty, being compelled to resort 
to devices suggested by the situation. The eagle-bearer 
of legion X was the first to leap into the surf. Csesar's 
success was hampered by the fact that he was without 
cavalry : the latter (c. 28), in fact, came on only three 
days after the landing, and when they hove in sight were 
scattered by a storm, some even driven back to France. 
Of these, even those who had been driven to the south- 
west never made the shore of Britain, but, having main- 
tained themselves during one stormy night tugging at 
anchors, likewise steered back across the channel. And 
soon Csesar, with his legionaries, realized on British soil 
the vicissitudes of natural conditions as affecting such an 



C^SAR IN 55 B.C. 125 

enterprise. The heavier and higher tides of the north 
Atlantic half ruined his entire armada. At first blush 
(4, 29), they were satisfied that they needs must winter 
in Britain. Whereby the native chieftains took new 
courage : Caesar could not have a new fleet, he had no 
cavalry, the camp of the Romans was small. Why not 
prolong the whole matter to the winter? Perhaps this 
might prove to be the last expedition of any Roman con- 
queror across the channel. So the chieftains made a new 
sworn agreement. But the proconsul prepared himself 
for every emergency, gathering grain and repairing his 
galleys with the tackle and timber and plates taken from 
those ships which were beyond repair. In the end but 
twelve ships were stricken from the original list. 

The Britons then watched their chance and fell upon 
the men of a legion sent out to cut grain ; this was the 
last considerable tract left uncut ; it was probably so left 
for a bait. Csesar in person saved this detachment from 
certain destruction. Soon afterwards the rainstorms of 
the autumn began. One movement of the Britons was 
made towards Cijesar's camp : these natives were routed. 
— Their readiness to treat, and their equal readiness to 
turn about and try the arbitrament of arms, stamps the 
British Kelts as even more vacillating and creatures of 
the moment and swayed by impulse than their Keltic kin 
beyond the channel. For them, then, Caesar doubled the 
number of hostages. They were not so situated that 
they could resolutely withdraw into the interior, as the 
Sugambri and Suebi had done in the same year. On the 
very midnight after receiving these hostages, Csesar sailed 
back to Gaul, arriving safely, with every vessel in good 
condition. 



[Plutarch ("Cses.," 23) notes the importance, in a large historical 
way, of this crossing, marking both the geographical and the imperial 
aspects of the enterprise. Dio (39, 50) likewise refers to the geographical 
features, but his estimate of the width of the straits of Dover (450 stadia 



126 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

= 56 miles) is much too large. There are some strong resemblances be- 
tween Plutarch and Dio : do they point to Livy ? Otherwise Dio reads 
his " Commentarii " pretty closely, except in this : He does not believe 
Ccesar quite fully, and again and again injects his own interpretation into 
Csesar's narrative: e.g., as though Ceesar had held back a full and frank 
account of his losses in the British grain-fields. He boldly says (39, 2) : 
avTovs 5^ ir\T)v dXLyujv ecpdecpav : against which put Csesar ("B. G.," 4, 
32, 5): "tum dispersos depositis armis in metendo occupatos subito 
adorti paucis interfectis reliquos incertis ordinibus perturbaverant. " 
Also Dio notes (after Livy ?) that Caesar got no solid advantage from this 
expedition, either for himself or for Rome, Dio also (53) says that Caesar 
himself boasted of the achievement (auros IcrxvpCis ^(xeixviveTo) : was this 
in his despatches to the senate ?] 

At home we observe that Crassus was passionately im- 
patient to be off to his eastern province and theatre of 
belated achievements, setting aside governmental customs : 
he left Rome even before November 15. (" Att.," 4, 13.) 

But Pompey made no preparation whatever for setting 
out to his provinces, viz., the entire peninsula of Spain, 
affecting a kind of indifference, as though he held it 
cheap.^ 



1 Syriam spernens, Hispaniam iactans : I follow the exegesis of Tyrrell 
on "Att.," 4, 9, 1. What, indeed, was provincial administration to the 
Only One ? He was now fifty-two years of age : what was a province or 
two to him, who in the east had added so many provinces to the empire ! 
His real motive for not going did not escape the keen penetration of 
Caesar's political judgment: cf. "Conmi. de Bello Civili," 1, 85, 8. 



CHAPTER XII 

C^SAR IN 54 B.C. 

Was the political machine of the three dynasts really 
out of gear? or was it not so overwhelmingly strong? 
For Csesar's arch-enemy, Domitius Ahenobarbus, Cato's 
brother-in-law, on January 1, was inaugurated consul on 
the capitol. He indeed scorned all compromise and 
pacification. Did the dynasts hold that they could neu- 
tralize his influence by his colleague ? Also, Cato had 
been chosen praetor and was inaugurated at the same 
time. 

Crassus had gone, even then looking forward to achieve- 
ments that would stamp him a new Alexander ; people 
did not recognize the cool and collected man any more. 
Caesar had written to him, adding fuel to the flame. 
Crassus in Mesopotamia was a good card for the procon- 
sul of Gaul. Events were beginning to break up the 
great pact. 

But to return to our biographical concerns. Some- 
where in March, 54, after the circuit courts of winter had 
been held, occurred the incident of the raid of the 
Pirustae on the frontier of Illyricum. Why does Caesar 
even tell it ? 



The Second Expedition to Britain 

This in a sense was a corollary of the first one, which 
latter had almost ended in failure, had left no true sense 
of consummation or success in either belligerent. The 
public opinion of the fickle Kelts was a force which the 
shrewd conqueror always had before his mind. 

127 



128 ANNALS OF CiESAR 

Before sailing, he in person with four legions made a 
demonstration into the territory of the Treveri (Treves), 
who had not attended the conferences and otherwise 
ignored his orders. Their eastern frontier was the 
Rhine. There was here a situation full of Germanic 
possibilities. Cyesar shrewdly undertook to support the 
faction of Cingetorix against the high-spirited Indutiomarus^ 
who had to furnish two hundred hostages. The private 
enmity of the last-named chieftain rose accordingly. — As 
to Caesar's topographical information we marvel at the 
vagueness of his outlining the range of the Ardennes : 
from the Rhine (sic) to Rheims. 

Ccesar sailed for Britain from the port called Itius^ 
where the channel, he says, was thirty miles wide. 

[Dr. Holmes devotes nine pages of small print to the question of the 
site of Portus Itius, passing in review of ancient authorities Ptolemy, 
Pliny, Pomponius Mela ; of modern, Drumann, Long, Schneider, Napo- 
leon III, Desjardins (who argues for Boulogne), Guest, General Creuly, 
Heller, Camden, Lewin, Ridgeway. He himself decides for Wissant. 
These things concern us Americans but slightly : whereas to British and 
French, they are matters of lively interest, being items in the very earliest 
chronicles of their national histories. We cannot discern nor determine 
amid the variations and controversies of their different findings.] 

Before Ccesar (who was accompanied by Cicero's 
brother Quintus) actually sailed, there came the end of 
the Nationalist nobleman, Dumnorix. (" B. G.," 5, 6-7.) 
Evidently the latter had not been in the first expedi- 
tion, and his boasts had reached Caesar's ears. Csesar 
could not well leave in his own rear a force as dangerous 
as the personality of Dumnorix, eager to aid in under- 
mining or undoing the work of the Roman proconsul. 
Of Ccesar's motives and allegations of motives I shall 
expect to treat later on. So we pass on to Britain. His 
base in Gaul was guarded by Labienus. We marvel that 
Csesar had learned so little of the vicissitudes of an open 
beach on the Atlantic, whence resulted new damage. 
Forty vessels were destroyed, mostly through collision. 



CiESAR IN 54 B.C. 129 

The loss was to be supplied by Labieniis. Now, at last, 
Caesar beached all the ships and surrounded them with a 
stockade. Ten days were thus consumed, and the earlier 
part of August had come. The Kelts of southern Britain 
had intrusted the chief command to Cassivellanus} who 
ruled north of the Themse (^Tamesis^. At this point 
Csesar inserts a sketch of the British Kelts (5, 12-14). 
He was struck by the identity of certain tribal names, 
such as Belgce^ Atrebates, on both sides of the channel. 
His somewhat crude geographical conceptions need not 
detain us. Most highly civilized was Cantium (Kent). 
In the interior, agriculture was not yet fully developed. 
The knowledge of the historical fact of immigration had 
already given place to that unerring symbol ^ of narrow 
retrospect, the notion of autochthonous ancestry. Tattoo- 
ing and polyandry seem to point to a somewhat low stage 
of civilization. In Britain the war chariots still flour- 
ished, and they could readily retreat and defy any serious 
pursuit on the part of the Roman legionaries or cavalry, 
either, the latter being, in the main, Keltic. The entire 
campaign was more a series of skirmishes. But at last 
(c. 17) they became bolder, and clung more steadily to 
the Romans, when three legions, attended by cavalry, had 
been sent foraging. On this occasion, the cavalry of 
continental Kelts was well supported by the legionaries, 
and for once a positive defeat was inflicted upon the 
Britains ; they were routed, leaving many slain behind. 
Csesar then marched north (5, 18) until he reached the 
Thames. He says nothing of intermediate stages or 
camps. The impetuous crossing of the Thames reads 
very wonderful, obviously upper Thames.^ 

Cadwallon now began to limit his operations to guerilla 

1 Cadwallon (Welsh), ' Supremely Good.' Cf. Cadwallader. 

2 Cf . passim in the Greek Periegete Pausanias. 

3 The inherent difficulties of the relation have been made much of by 
critics, but are defended by Dr. Holmes. 

K 



130 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

warfare, the ' little war ' of the Spanish phrase, checking, 
observing, annoying, surprising. And Csesar, in turn, 
was limited to the task of crippling the natives as much 
as possible by pillaging and burning. We seem to read 
between the lines that it was not so very much : also, it 
seems that the Keltic cavalry was not intrusted with any 
share in these operations. 

Now if Csesar had achieved nothing further, it would 
not at all have repaid the chance and treasure involved in 
the second invasion : also. Time and the waning season 
were on the side of the British Kelts. 

At this point, the submission of the Trinohantes occurred, 
or was made to occur, as a matter of some felicity or con- 
solation for Caesar's prestige. This tribe, dwelling in 
Essex and Suffolk (to use the more familiar nomenclature 
of later Britain), sought Ciesar's support against Cad- 
wallon, their poweiful neighbor on their west. If the 
expelled aspirant for the chieftainship (^Manduhracius) 
had crossed to the continent and besought Ctiesar's support, 
and obviously had served Csesar in order to accomplish his 
own restoration, then the proconsul was in possession of 
such a wedge or lever as elsewhere he had used with good 
results, among the continental Kelts. Thus Csesar ' de- 
fended ' the Trinobantes, who gave him hostages and 
grain. Now a larger number of minor tribes (c. 21) 
followed this example and surrendered. 

From this he learned the whereabouts of the 'town' 
or stockade of Cadwallon. He marched upon it and 
assaulted it, but the Kelts escaped. And here we learn 
that Cadwallon was a kind of national leader among the 
Britons, for, while Csesar was north of the Thames, Cad- 
wallon created a diversion in the south : four chieftains 
of Kent attacked Caesar's naval stockade, but were beaten 
off with loss. 



CiESAR IN 54 B.C. 131 

Now Cadwallon had ^ exhausted his resources : one 
would almost prefer to believe that a few more weeks of 
the Fabian policy successfully begun would have allowed 
him to see Caesar's vessels returning across the channel. 
Perhaps he thought Csesar intended to winter in Britain ; 
at all events, if we may believe Caesar's account, Cadwallon 
(22) submitted. That is to say, the proconsul levied 
hostages, and determined what amount of tribute Britain 
was annually to pay to the Roman people. These are very 
big and very brave words. Britannia as a whole ? Pay ? 
No, indeed. There was absolutely no base for this sort of 
thing. What he had accomplished was no conquest of 
Britain, not even a shadow thereof. Even Caesar's own 
relation, leading up to this consummation, impresses one 
as not much more than proconsular bravado or pretence. 
Perhaps some acts of Briton chieftains occurred, which 
allowed him to return across the channel with a straight 
face. 

It is true he returned in two relays of transportation, 
because there were prisoners, and forty ships had been 
destroyed. "A great number of prisoners": but had 
the submission of Cadwallon accomplished nothing for his 
compatriots ? The sixty vessels despatched by Labienus 
met bad weather, and in the end failed to take any part 
in the work of transportation. 

[Through his brother Quintus' legateship, Cicero was brought into 
closer relation with Caesar's headquarters. But it stands out as doubly- 
remarkable that now only, in the fifth year of these conquests, the letters 
of this lively and eminent public man should exhibit genuine interest in, 
and information concerning, these important events. The Koman politi- 
cians, excepting Cato and his followers, did not realize the momentous 
importance of those northwestern campaigns. The references, then, in 
Cicero's letters, are doubly noteworthy, because they most likely antedate 
the actual composition of the Commentarii by several years. Balbus, the 
most trusted of Caesar's confidential agents, was then in the capital. A 

1 Really ? The axiom of Perfer et ohdura ! had little support in the 
Keltic ingenium. Far more difficult was the subjugation of the Saxons 
by Charles the Great, later on. 



132 ANNALS OF CESAR 

bundle of letters in which were missives, both of the orator and of the 
Spaniard, reached Csesar in Britain, wet, and quite illegible, except a few 
words from Balbus, so wet, in fact,i that the very name of Cicero was 
blurred or blotted out. Cicero, consequently, copied his letter ' eodem 
exemplo,' which shows that he, through his secretary, Tiro, kept copies. 
It was known in Rome as early as February, 54, that Caesar was going to 
invade Britain once more. Later on, in August, probably, Cicero writes 
to his friend and prot^g^e, the expert in civil law, Trebatius Testa 
("Fam.," 7, 7), who had joined Caesar's headquarters on the orator's 
recommendation ; in the settlement of the civil administration of Gaul 
such a man was useful. "I am wont to marvel that I do not receive 
letters from you as often as they are brought me from my brother Quin- 
tus." Trebatius, as it turned out, had been left behind by Caesar, prob- 
ably in the region of Amiens. During this time, Caesar's tahellarii carried 
the orator's letter to the latter's brother. Caesar had offered to Trebatius 
a military tribuneship, which the jurist declined. One could then have 
the perquisites of such a post, without the hardships of actual service,'^ 
so wrote the man of letters at a comfortable distance, in one of his villas: 
but I greatly doubt whether such was feasible, in the actual campaigns, 
and under an imperator such as Gains Julius Caesar was, the veritable 
incarnation of vigor and efficiency. Later in the season, Cicero wrote to 
Atticus (4,1 6, 7) : " The termination of the Britannic war is looked for- 
w^ard to. For it is a well-established fact that the approaches of the island 
are fortified with wondrous piles (cliffs?). That, too, has now been 
ascertained, that there is neither a tiny particle of silver at all in that 
island, nor any hope of booty except from captives." — After the cam- 
paign was well over, on October 23, Cicero ("Att.," 4, 17, 3) received 
a letter from C^sar and one from brother Quintus : confecta (sic) Britan- 
nia, obsidibus acceptis, nulla prcecla, imperata tamen pecunia (a confirma- 
tion of the Commentarii), etc., etc., the return being made on September 
26 ; it took twenty-seven days from Britain to central Italy for a letter. 

Plutarch's summary agrees closely with Caesar's relation ("Caes.," 
23) : Kol fidxai-s iroWa^s (vague) KaKibaas Toi>s iroXe/xiovs fxaWov f) roiis 
Idiovs dxpeXrja-as (e.g. Quintus Cicero), oi/d^v yap 6 tl Kal Xa^e^v fjv E^lov air 
dvBpwTTUv KaKo^iicv Kai TrepTjTuv, ovx olov 6/3oi5Xero r u) ttoX^/xc^ t^Xos 
iir^drjKev, dXX' 6/xripovs Xa/3wj' Trapd rod /SacriX^ws Kal Ta^dfxevos (p6povs, dirij- 
pev eK TTJs PTjaov. 

Livy (105) : '•'■ aliquam partem insulae in potestatem redegit." Dio 
(40, 1 sq.) discriminates between pretexts and actual motives for the 
second Britannic expedition. Otherwise Dio reproduces Caesar's account 
with considerable care and generally with a fair degree of accuracy, which 
he does not at all always do : his work in this respect is very uneven. 
But after the crossing of the Thames he condenses all into a few lines.] 

1 " Quint, fr.," 2, 10. 

2 "Fam.," 7, 8, dempto labore militias. 



CiESAR IN 54 B.C. 133 

About this time occurred certain events which tended 
to weaken the great pact. And first among these was 
the death in childbirth of Julia. To this matter Cicero 
refers in a letter to his brother (3, 1, 25) : " From Britain, 
Csesar dated a letter to me on the first of September, which 
I received on Sept. 30, a letter of quite comfortable tone 
as to the affairs of Britain ; in which, lest 1 marvel that I 
received none from you, he writes that he was without you 
when he came to the sea. To this letter I have written no 
reply, not even to congratulate him, — no reply, on account 
of his bereavement.^'' Julia was Ciesar's only child, and her 
infant son ^ soon followed the mother to the grave. The 
powerful personal tie between the two public men was 
now broken. — Julia, through some spontaneous act of 
popular enthusiasm, was buried, not on the Alban estate 
of her husband, but on the Campus Martins. And this was 
done, although the consul, Domitius, made opposition and 
said it was not religiously permissible that she be buried 
(i.e.^ cremated) there without some governmental action. 

The anarchy^ now more and more seizing upon the cur- 
rent affairs of the capital, had as one of its chief symptoms 
the chronic postponement of elections. A tribune, Hirrus, 
seriously contemplated some ordinance to have Pompey 
named dictator. 

' We have lost,' so wrote Cicero about this time, ' not 
only all sap and blood, but even the complexion and physi- 
ognomy of the old-time commonweath.' More and more he 
withdrew from public life, such as it was: his profession and 
his art of eloquence, his villas, his literary pursuits engaged 
him. The very faculty of anger, he declares somewhat 
pessimistically, he has eliminated, or lost somehow, from 
his psychological equipment. (" Att.," 4, 16, 10.) 

1 So Liv. 106, and Suet., " Cses.," 26. Dio, 39, 64, dvydTpLov n r^Kovaa. 
Plutarch, in relating the resultant breach between the dynasts ("Pomp.," 
63), writes : 17 olKdort]% dvyprjrai ... a curious perfect. — As though he 
were transcribing from some contemporary Latin relation . . . perhaps 
some letter, or other direct utterance. 



134 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

Winter Quarters of 5J^-53^ and the Catastrophe of Aduatuca 

It was the difficulty of the grain supply in the autumn 
of 54 B.C., which induced Csesar to resort to a consider- 
able dislodgment of his forces for winter quarters. First, 
however, a concilium of Gauls was held at Samarohriva 
(Amiens). This must have been in October, 54. It was 
here, it seems, that Caesar first began to use the services of 
the Roman civil lawyer, Trebatius. ("Fam.," 7, "Epp.," 
11-12.) Matius, too, perhaps the finest soul in the coterie 
that surrounded the proconsul, is noted as being with him 
at this time. (" Fam.," 15, 2.) Cicero had learned that 
the Treveri were a dangerous tribe. ("Fam.," 7, 13, 2.) 

For the first time during his proconsulate Csesar deter- 
mined to spend the winter not at once in the shadow of 
Apennine or view of Adriatic, but among his conquered 
subjects, — his^ indeed, although officially of course sub- 
jects of the Roman people. Caesar, I say, resolved to stay 
there in northern Gaul until he was informed of the defi- 
nite execution of his plans for winter quarters. These 
were indeed novel, and perhaps also he had received inti- 
mations of unrest in certain quarters. For these 'coun- 
cils ' obviously served the designs of the administrator no 
less than of the conqueror ; they were not instituted for 
the sake of the Kelts and of their national interests. 
Csesar was well advised to tarry ; for the inclement sea- 
son had barely set in, when at three different points 
insurrection broke out. The chief of the Oarnutes (Or- 
leans) was slain — openly so — by his private enemies. 
He was a creature of Caesar's. The deed was instigated 
by many citizens of that community. It was open defi- 
ance and revolt. 

Again, among the Treveri, Indutiomarus (5, 3) took 
active steps to recover his authority there and to extin- 
guish the memory of the humiliation to which he had 
been subjected by Caesar. He further stirred to revolt 



CiESAR IN 54 B.C. 135 

the JEburones, under Ambiorix and Catuvolcus, even after 
they had made delivery of their quota of grain at the 
Roman winter quarters of Sabinus and Cotta. 

The desire to throw off the newly imposed Roman yoke 
seems to have been fairly universal at that time, and the 
spirit of a patriotic rising may have been stimulated by 
the very dislocation and wider distribution of the Roman 
forces for that winter. They hoped to destroy them or 
overwhelm them in detail, simultaneously, so that mutual 
succor should prove impossible. 

The story of the divided counsels of the two^ com- 
manders at Aduatuca, and how Sabinus prevailed in the 
council of war, and how the fifteen cohorts perished, is 
told by Csesar with much detail, and, we may add, with 
a peculiar fairness, which we may describe as born from 
psychological discrimination. The temperament and the 
ingenium of Cotta and Sabinus are set forth in a luminous 
manner, as leading up to — as predetermining, in fact — 
the actual results, the catastrophe near Lieges, never so 
famous as that of the Teutohurger Wald, sixty-three years 
later, but mightily impressive then for the national spirit 
of the Kelts. Out of the six thousand men but few 
(c. 27) escaped to Labienus, who was then wintering 
among the favored Remi. 

There followed an attack upon the winter quarters of 
the younger Cicero. It was incited by the exultant and 
now doubly sanguine Ambiorix. The attacking patriots 
were much more numerous, while Quintus had but one 
legion, and himself at this time was in poor health (c. 10). 

The native levies grew constantly, and what could be 
devised to alarm and shake the resolution of the solitary 
post and its commander, they devised. Their chief aim, 
as before, was to draw the invaders out of their stockade. 
Cicero, however, was cool and firm. Now the Belgse es- 
tablished a zone of investment of ten miles in circumfer- 

1 Why two f 



136 ANNALS OF CAESAR 

ence (resorting to many devices of siege operations in 
which they imitated the Romans), with a stockade ten 
feet high and a trench fifteen feet wide. 

Balls of red-hot burnt clay hurled by the Belgian be- 
siegers set on fire the thatches of some huts in Cicero's 
stockade ; while flames and smoke arose (c. 43), the 
Romans had to sustain a desperate assault. Upon the 
intrepid garrison Csesar bestows very high praise. It 
was a critical day, but for the foe, too, most serious, for 
the Belgse were packed close to the Roman stockade and 
their losses were in proportion. One tower was moved 
close by the besiegers, but none of them dared to accept 
the taunting challenge of the Romans, represented at this 
critical juncture by the centurions of the third cohort. 
Much space — and this is in consonance with the general 
plan of the Commentarii — is given to the relation of the 
prowess of Pulio (Pullo?) and Vorenus, rivals for promo- 
tion. This narrative is composed with almost dramatic 
liveliness, although Caesar himself did not witness any 
part of it. We have before us the deliberate policy of 
the aspiring conqueror : the loyalty of his own legions, 
loyalty to himself primarily, was to him positively the 
most important thing in the entire sphere of his concerns 
and plans. 

By the barest chance through a Belgic nobleman Vertico 
the proconsul at last learned of Cicero's critical situation. 
Caesar got this despatch, and about 5 p.m. sent orders to 
M. Crassus (Beauvais) and to Fabius and Labienus. At 
9 the next forenoon the troops of Fabius were coming. 
The same day, these very troops added twenty miles to 
their march of the preceding night. As I read the ac- 
count, these legionaries in not more than twenty-four 
hours covered about forty-five miles, in the latter part of 
November or so. Fabius joined his chief commander. 

Caesar, now with two legions, instead of three, pushed 
into the territory of the Nervii in forced marches. The 



C^SAR IN 54 B.C. 137 

Kelts, duly informed, now abandoned the siege of Cicero's 
stockade, and with their force of sixty thousand men 
turned away to intercept Csesar. The latter now relaxed 
the extreme speed of his forward movement and estab- 
lished himself in a camp more narrowly designed than 
would have been normally requisite for his seven thousand 
infantry. Thus he drew the natives on to fight where he 
desired it. Having filled them with absolute confidence 
to assault his camp as though nothing was left but the 
taking of it, he darted forth upon them like a thunder- 
bolt. On the same day, before sunset, he joined Quintus 
Cicero, not having lost a man. 

With the greatest possible publicity of praise and com- 
mendation he honored his legate and the tribunes and 
centurions. From Keltic prisoners he ascertained more 
definitely the catastrophe of the two legates. The morale 
of his own troops he reestablished by a cheering address. 

The news of Csesar's rout of the Nervii reached Labie- 
nus before midnight : the proconsul himself had arrived at 
Cicero's stockade after 3 p.m. In less than nine hours, 
therefore, the news somehow reached Labienus, about 
sixty miles away. So Indutiomarus hastened away, and 
let Csesar's chief legate alone. The proconsul himself 
now determined to remain in northern Gaul during the 
whole winter. His headquarters he made at Samarobriva 
(Amiens). Why? Because the destruction of the fifteen 
cohorts had inflamed the Kelts. Why did the Gauls hold 
their patriotic conferences (c. 53) in solitary places? 
Because, no doubt, in popular and frequented localities 
the chance of being spied upon by Caesar's agents was 
too great. It was an anxious winter for Cjjesar. Much 
he accomplished by keeping the chieftains in apprehension, 
still the Senones (Sens) drove out the supreme adminis- 
trators established over them by Caesar. The Remi alone 
and the Aedui — Dumnorix was dead — enjoyed the com- 
plete confidence of Csesar. 



138 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

All winter long, the Treveri strove to bring some Ger- 
man host across the Rhine. But to the Germans, the 
twofold record of Ariovistus and of the Usipetes sufficed : 
they declined to come over. But Indutiomarus had made 
himself the centre of the nationalist plans and aspirations. 
His own faction succeeded in outlawing his rival and son- 
in-law, Cingetorix, the Romanist, and confiscating the 
latter's estate. Further, he moved upon the winter quar- 
ters of Labienus, but he fell himself a victim to the dan- 
gerously conspicuous position which he had attained 
among the nationalists. For these there was no room in 
the Roman Empire, least of all in the province of the pro- 
consul Csesar. The death of the fiery Treverian tempo- 
rarily benumbed and checked the national movement for 
freedom ; the coals were for a short time hidden under 
the treacherous ashes. 

[These grave troubles of Csesar are related quite summarily t»y Plutarch 
(c. 24) : TrdvTa (xkv addcs duepprjyvvTo rd tQv TaXaruip. After Csesar had 
already turned to go to Italy, the ' council ' of Amiens had so far de- 
ceived the determined and wily conqueror. The citation of sixty thou- 
sand natives surrounding Cicero's stockade, and of the seven thousand in 
Caesar's relief corps, may point to direct use by Plutarch of Cgesar's 
" Ephem^rides." Chapter 50, Plutarch has read carefully, blundering 
only in one item : KaKeivos i^aTrarQu viritpvyev del : Caesar merely: ' con- 
sulto equites cedere seque in castra recipere iubet.' Dio (40, 6) adds a 
curious incident to the death of Sabinus, viz., that Ambiorix added a 
certain utterance: iwiXiycov &\\a re Kal otl '■'■roLo'ide ix^vtol 6vt€s ttws 
T7)\iK0}jTU}v r)/xQv 6PTWV dpx^Lv e^Aexe " ; a pragmatizing dramatic inci- 
dent conceived by Dio. Otherwise we have his ratiocinative and ana- 
lytical rewriting of Caesar's account. Also Dio has detail of the Greek 
script (40, 9) in Caesar's private despatch to Quintus Cicero : it is instruc- 
tive for a deeper understanding of Dio's manner (scil., in elucidating 
Caesar's motives). Dio also introduces the detail of Cesar's cryptogram 
on this ; cf. Suet., 66, in quibus siqua occultius perferenda^ errant, per 
notas scripsit, id est, sic structo litterarum ordine, ut nullum verbum 
efiBci posset ; quae siquis investigare et persequi volet, quartam elemen- 
torum, id est D pro A et proinde reliquas convertet." 



1 Perferre clearly pertains to despatches. 



CHAPTER XIII 

C^SAE, IN 53 B.C. 

And now Caesar's task underwent great stress and 
strain. He had many reasons for anticipating a ' greater 
movement' of unrest, and for independence among his 
new subjects. His first need was to repair the loss of 
fifteen cohorts. The steps for these reinforcements the 
author of the Commentarii puts forward as a necessary 
and patriotic rehabilitation of the prestige of Rome and of 
Italy. One legion levied by Pompey in the Po country, 
and still stationed there, and not yet in Spain, Pompey 
yielded to Caesar, " both for public reasons and from personal 
friendship. ^^ (6, 1.) Through his own military agents 
there, Caesar levied two further legions; the result being 
that he had one and a half legions more than he com- 
manded before the catastrophe of the two legates. 

In the waning winter preceding the spring of 53, the 
Treveri were the sorest point among his Keltic subjects. 
Not at all cowed by the death of Indutiomarus, the Tre- 
veri maintained his policy of insurrection. They united 
with themselves patriotic leaders, like Ambiorix, and, as 
before, strove to bring German tribes to the westerly 
bank of the great frontier stream. Clearly the movement 
for national independence was spreading. 

Caesar, therefore, without waiting for the clement sea- 
son, with four legions invaded the country of the Nervii, 
ravaged their lands, and compelled them to give hostages. 
The winter was not even gone by when this task was 
completed. 

On the very threshold of spring Caesar held one of his 
' councils,' or assemblies of Gaul, i.e., of the aristocracy. 

139 



140 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

Perhaps it was at Samarobriva, But when he saw that 
the Senones, Carnutes, Treveri did not attend it, he trans- 
ferred the diet to Lutetia (Parisiorum) — this being the 
first mention in Roman letters, such as we have, of the city 
Cjpf Paris. Upon announcing this transfer, he at once moved 
into the country of the recalcitrant Senones, and surprised 
them before they could flee into their fortified towns. So 
they, using the intercession of the ^dui, begged for clem- 
ency. He agreed to pardon them, placing in the keeping 
of the jEdui the hundred hostages he demanded. 

Similarly the Carnutes anticipated the proconsul's ex- 
treme measures ; for them interceded the Remi. Then, 
(6, 5), with supreme energy and concentration of his 
rare faculties, the proconsul entered upon the task of 
dealing with the Treveri, and with Ambiorix, chieftain of 
the Eburones. 

The latter was the chief object of his concern. To 
isolate him, Csesar invaded southern Holland, and* the 
Menapii, for the first time, made their submission in the 
usual manner, i.e.^ by giving hostages. Meanwhile, the 
Treveri were moving upon the single legion of Labienus, 
which had been wintering among them. But when they 
learned that Ceesar had directed two legions to reinforce 
his chief legate, they stopped fifteen miles away. Labienus 
now, with twenty-five cohorts, moved upon the patriots, 
and built his stockade one mile away, separated from the 
Treveri by a river with very steep banks.^ Across this 
stream, with cunning strategy, Labienus allured the 
natives, after which he turned upon their irregular bands 
with a splendid and irresistible, charge, and routed them 
so utterly that, in a few days, the entire community of 
the Treveri made their submission. The Germans, who 
had been advancing to the Rhine from the east, retired, and 
were accompanied by the kinsmen of Indutiomarus. Cin- 
getorix, the Romanist, resumed sway among the Treveri. 
1 Moselle ? Sour ? Alzette ? Ourt ? See Rice Holmes. 



CiESAR IN 53 B.C. 141 

Caesar, himself, now came down from southern Holland 
into the Moselle country. Being there, he determined 
once more to cross to the right bank of the frontier stream, 
" a little above " ^ the point where he had gone over two 
years before. His aim was to make an impressive demon- 
stration against his rivals, the Germans, and definitely to 
eliminate these restless and dangerous hosts as a perpetual 
possibility of interference with his conquest and subjuga- 
tion of the continental Kelts. The point of crossing, 
probably, was not far from Coblenz. The Ubii (Nassau) 
were the inhabitants of the right bank at this point. 
From these Caesar learned that it was the ever-adventurous 
and war-loving Suehi who had been advancing to help 
the Treveri, and that, therefore, the lessons of Ariovist's 
defeat, and of the annihilation of the Usipetes and Tenc- 
teri, had lost, for the Suebi at least, what terrors they may 
have had. The proconsul, then (6, 10), informed of the 
massing of the Suebi as then going on, entered upon a 
policy which was to draw the Suebi into a general battle. 
But this they would not risk, but withdrew northeastward 
toward the Bacenis range, i.e.^ the Thuringian forest, a 
veritable wall between the Cherusci and Suebi, a bar which 
made much for peace between these high-spirited and war- 
like tribes. 



[It is somewhat speculative to try to determine why, at this point, Caesar 
inserts his general sketch of Gauls and Germans. Drumann suggests that 
he wished to weaken the sense of the resultlessness of this expedition. But 
why not assume that, in spite of the absence of all attempts at fine writ- 
ing — why not assume that Caesar ever carried in his consciousness the 
design of giving out things of abiding value and authority, and of adding, 
in a material and impressive way, to the learning and information of the 
world. He knew with detailed knowledge what Alexandrine erudition 
(e.g., Eratosthenes, 6, 24, 2) could tell him. 

And so we may, perhaps, summarize his ethnographical delineation at 
this point of the relation, adding some additional illumination from such 
stray notices as may be found elsewhere. 

1 Really very considerably so. 



142 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

The first feature which Caesar lays before us is (c. 10) the universal 
prevalence of factions and factionalism : everywhere a cleavage, but no 
more divisions than two. And this feature of adhering to one of these, 
and supporting its aspirations, entered not only into individual states, but 
into homes and households. Now the bodies of adherents are not demo- 
cratic equals of their leader, but they are dependents, vassals, clients, and 
derive from him shelter and defence in many concerns of life. So too, in 
a large and national way, the ^dui and the Sequani were struggling for 
primacy and leadership. It. was this contention which brought mighty 
alien forces into Gaul : the Sequani were responsible for the coming over 
of Ariovist, as we saw before (" B. G.," 1, 31). As there were personal 
clients, so there were collective, tribal ones. It was this distress of the 
^dui which had brought the druid Divitiacus to Rome in 61 b.c. He re- 
turned without immediate relief, and, even in 59 b.c, Caesar's keen vision 
had kept the truculent German in good humor. But the events of 58 
brought about a profound change. The JEdui, under Caesar's protection, 
recovered, or seemed to recover, their primacy among the Kelts. The 
Remi, by Caesar's shrewd policy, were endowed with a similar leadership 
and preeminence among the communities of the North. 

Socially, there were two aristocratic classes among the Kelts : one is 
fairly compelled here to notice the groundwork of mediaeval institutions ; 
for the druids and knights stand out as later on the clergy and the chiv- 
alry. As for the nobles, to them, in great part, had become dependent the 
common people, and this dependency reminded Caesar of slavery. This 
change of status came about and was accomplished amid certain forms, or 
formularies, which were fixed and solemn {dicant, 6, 13, 2). 

The druids appear not only as a kind of national clergy, but endowed 
also with a power fully commensurate to .the excommunication of the 
later mediaeval church. And the druids resemble this mighty corporation 
in still another way. They are a court of last appeal in public and private 
contentions. Disobedience is punished with exclusion from any share in 
the religion of the Kelts : a ban which, like a dark shadow, falls across 
all the further lives and the whole range of social contact, for those 
who have been contumacious to the druids' verdict. The Chief Druid 
is chosen for life. There is an annual synod, or consistory, of druids 
held in a central town in the country of the Bituriges (Bourges), a court 
of appeals. 

The purest and most authentic form of druidical doctrine was main- 
tained in Britain. Immunity was granted the druids from all taxes, or 
other civil burdens, as well as from military service. The druidic the- 
ology, or philosophy, had a distinctly esoteric character. It was trans- 
mitted orally and still in rigid identity of formulation. Endless lines were 
learned by heart but never reduced to writing, while in the ordinary 
transactions of life they used Greek script. Thus it would seem that 
Massilia was the fountain of that particular form of civilization. One 
great dogma was that of metempsychosis, or transmigration of souls : the 



CiESAR IN 53 B.C. 143 

doctrine of the ancient Egyptians, as well as of Pythagoras and Plato. 
Purther, their system dealt with astronomy, the universe, and gods. 

The article Druidce in Pauly Wissowa^ by Ihm, has full account of 
bibliography : the same references of ancient writers are given in Holder^ 
' Altkeltischer Sprachschatz. ' He gives the etymology as dru-vids (High- 
wise). The chief classic references are: Diodorus, 5, 31, 4; Strabo, 4, 
198 . . . <Edvov dk ovK &v€v 8pv't:8u>v . . . ; Lucan, 1, 453 sqq. ; Plin., " N. 
H.," 16, 249; 30, 13. Tacit., "Ann.," 14, 30. Their human sacrifices 
are noted by Cicero in an oration of 69 b.c. : " quis enim ignorat eos usque 
ad banc diem retinere illam immanem ac barbaram consuetudinem homi- 
num immolandorum !" ("pro Fonteio," 31). — Mela, 3, 19; Cic, "Divi- 
nat.," 1, 90. Mantles, also, and magic were practised by them (Plin., 
" N. H.," 29, 52-54), as well as medicine. Mistletoe was gathered. 
Twenty years were often devoted to the acquisition of druidical lore, 
Mela, 3, 19 : " docent multa noblissimos gentis, clam et diu, vicenis an- 
nis, aut in specu, aut in abditis saltibus." 

Tiberius and Claudius were active in doing away with the medical and 
mantic profession in druidism. British druidism endured much longer 
than continental : Strabo (1, 197) notes particularly that all judicature 
of capital crimes was once entrusted to them : they taught that an abun- 
dance of executions would presage an abundance of crops. The world 
they held was indestructible, with periodical catastrophes of fire or water. 
They had no temples, but used groves, just as the Germans did. Horses, 
slaves, equipment, were often burned with the corpses of the deceased. i 

So much for this branch of the Keltic aristocracy. The knights 
(c. 16) had really but one sphere of excellence, viz., war. Their rank, 
quite like the feudal system later on, was determined by the number 
of clients attached to their service. ^ 

Further on, Csesar takes up the religion of the Gauls. Here life for life 
was conceived as a divine obligation, and human sacrifices were main- 
tained. Here, often, the victims were burned alive while bound to huge 
structures of wickerwork. In Strabo's time (Augustus-Tiberius), these 
customs were forbidden. 

The Gauls, like the Britons, conceived their race as autochthonous, the 
usual symbol of the entire absence of wider historical horizon, or retro- 
spect. They counted time by night, not days. 

Passing over some of the social customs, such as the adjustment of 
property in marriage, or the peculiar usage of not acknowledging paternity, 
we come to the control of public news (6, 20) : the fact that this was super- 
vised by the magistrates with jealous care, reflects, for us, the extreme 
mobility of the Gallic ingenium. 

1 Dr. Holmes, 532-536, is mainly controversial, giving less positive 
information than Ihm and Holder. 

2 '■ Amb actus apud Ennium lingua Gallica servus appellatur,' "Fes- 
tus," p. 4. 



144 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

^ There was a time (6, 24, 1), when the Kelts surpassed the Germans 
when they crossed into what is now southwest Germany. So the Boii. 
But the growth of material civilization, so Csesar argues, gradually de- 
prived them of this preeminence. And now, he adds (6, 24, 6), not even 
the Gauls themselves compare themselves with the Germans. 

On the whole, the political condition of the Gauls then exhibited this 
ever-recurrent feature, that some one nobleman incessantly endeavored 
to advance to something like monarchy within his own class or common- 
wealth. This was sometimes achieved by nobles here and there, but 
they seem rarely, or never, to have succeeded in establishing a dynasty, 
or succession.! We think of Dumnorix and Orgetorix.] 



[As for the Germans, they impressed Cfesar as a nationality of simpler 
life and more robust than the Kelts. Of their legends, or worship, he 
knows but little, mainly this, that in their prayers they address them- 
selves particularly to such forces as are directly and palpably beneficent, 
viz.. Sun, Moon, Fire. 

He praises, significantly enough, the continence and chastity of their 
youth. Their land they hold in common, and shift about in a regulated 
manner. Their chief motive is that thus they maintain in the highest 
possible degree a warlike spirit and a prestige amongst men : also, they 
hold that thus the rise of an aristocracy may be more effectively checked, 
and as for the luxury of a finer domicile, it would be impossible and the 
hardy fibre of the ancestors endure undiminished. The main body of 
their people, too, would thus rtinain content in this vigorous and true 
sense of genuine equality. 

War is the emergency which induces them to endow their leaders, 
then specifically chosen, with powers denied them, or any one else, in the 
time of peace, viz., the power of life and death. As among the Spartiats, 
looting is not forbidden, provided it be done among aliens or tribal neigh- 
bors. Such raids may be instituted off-hand, at any time, provided the 
self -professed leader be one whose name and fame readily wins followers.] 

In returning to the left, or Roman bank of the Rhine, 
Csesar left standing the greater part of the western end 
of the bridge and fortified it with a tete du pont, a perma- 
nent warning for the restless German invaders. As for 
the rest of the summer, his chief design was twofold. He 
desired to capture Ambiorix and in some signal manner to 
avenge the destruction of the fifteen cohorts, and, incident- 

1 Regnum obtinuerat, 4, 12, 4 ; 5, 25, 1. On the attempt to advance 
from principatus to regnum, cf. "B. G.," 7, 4. 



CESAR IN 53 B.C. 145 

ally, to ruin the tribe of the Ehurones. He even went so 
far as to proclaim to all men that the lands and chattels 
of that tribe were forfeited to any taker. The method 
which he had devised, and the measures which he had put 
upon his programme, seemed to insure complete success. 
No loophole, apparently, was left to any slip of fortune or 
other miscarriage in the proconsul's scheme of impressive 
revenge. These operations began in the latter part of 
July.^ First, he ordered his entire cavalry under Basilus 
to make a swift dash through these regions, without warn- 
ing, and without any campfires at night. But Ambiorix 
escaped on his fleet horse, having almost been captured 
in a solitary homestead in a dense forest. Old King Cad- 
volk took his own life by poison, helpless as he was in 
beholding the misery of his people. 

So far, Caesar had failed, but he persevered. He 
selected as his base and as the central point of the simul- 
taneous operations proposed, Aduatuca^ the very locality 
made memorable by the destruction of the fifteen cohorts. 
The stockade and redoubts (6, 32,) were in perfect condi- 
tion. Here was stored all the baggage, and here were 
placed all the sick and convalescents. Legion XIV, with 
Quintus Cicero as post-commander, was here established 
as garrison, and two hundred mounted men were detailed 
to serve as scouts. 

This seems a good point for surveying the military 
resources of Caesar as they were in the summer of 53 B.C. 
One legion, then, was under Cicero at Aduatuca: therefore, 
Ccesar actually commanded eleven legions and two cohorts^ not 
counting the cavalry, the majority of whom were Kelts. 

Nine legions were divided as follows: Labienus, with 
three, to sweep towards the northwest and the German 
Ocean: Trebonius,^ likewise with three legions, was to 

1 ' Cum maturescere frumenta inciperent,' "B. G.," 6, 29, 4. 

2 Political servitor of the Triumvirate as tribunus plebis, Dec. 10, 56, 
to Dec. 10, 55. He was now beginning to reap his reward. 

L 



146 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

ravage the country adjacent to the Aduatuca ; Caesar in 
person to move through the country of the upper Scheldt 
and the extreme northwest end of the Ardennes: three 
mighty "brooms — what could escape them ? After seven 
days, all three corps were to return to Aduatuca. These 
were punitive expeditions ; at the same time, it would 
seem that those who were to suffer from the wide-spread 
misery of Caesar's revenge would have been eager to seize 
the person of Ambiorix and offer him up to the angry 
proconsul. But this did not happen. Nay, fortune 
brought about a curious and, for Cicero, quite serious turn 
of events. The latter's eastellum on the seventh day quite 
suddenly was attacked by a roving band of marauding 
Sygambrians. These had heard of Caesar's proclamation, 
making the Eburones the prey of any invader. While 
picking up sheep and swine and placing them in the forests 
in care of some of their comrades, it suddenly occurred to 
them that the eastellum at Aduatuca held loot of vastly 
greater value, and suddenly they appeared in swarms be- 
fore it. Cicero's situation was critical, for five of his 
cohorts had gone forth to forage. Of these the greater 
parts were raw recruits. In the end, Cicero escaped with 
slight loss. At the same time, the credit for cool and 
intrepid action seems to be given by Caesar, not to Quin- 
tus Cicero (the latter is not named in the entire account 
of the defence), but to the veteran centurion Baculus and 
to other centurions. 

At night, Caesar's cavalry heralded his return. He 
complained of the one thing (6, 32), that the cohorts had 
been despatched away from their garrison-service : there 
must be left absolutely no place to chance. 

The proconsul repeated his punitive expedition. The 
Eburones were deprived of everything by which life may 
be sustained, but the greatest prize of all, Ambiorix, did 
not fall into Caesar's hands. With four well-mounted 
attendants, the haunted chieftain again and again disap- 



CiESAR IN 53 B.C. 147 

peared in the thickets of the Ardennes. After this 
campaign, he held one of his councils at Durocorturum 
(Rheims), and Acco, the author of the rising of the Se- 
nones, was sent to the block. Others fled, and whoever 
should give them shelter became equally guilty to the 
proconsul. 

For the first time in some years, Caesar placed some of 
his winter quarters farther south, among the Lingones 
(Langres). 

[Dio takes up these matters after the Parthian expedition of Crassus 
(40, 31.) The deceptive statement of Labienus (" B. G.," 6, 8, 3) he cites 
with the somewhat heavy introductory word id-nfirjydprjae roidde. Dio 
makes much of the design and stratagem of the chief legate, and even 
expands it beyond Caesar's relation, as he often does when he is particu- 
larly interested. 

Dio's report (40, 32) on the second crossing of the Rhine is not quite 
fairly made, for he writes as if a genuine invasion of conquest had been 
desirable or feasible. He does not take time to examine Csesar's real 
policy. His saying that Caesar quickly retired to the left bank from fear 
of the Suebi, is not well put. 

He censures Caesar for ruining the country of the Eburones — KairoL 
fjLTiSep veojTepiaaaav : which, however, is not at all exact, Ambiorix had 
been supported by his people. The surprise by the Sygambri is briefly 
told ; the splendid organization of the punitive and scouting expeditions 
is passed over in silence. "He himself (40, 32, 5), on account of the 
winter and because the situation in Rome was one of anarchy, inflicted no 
revenge (sic), but, having dismissed his troops to their several winter- 
quarters, he himself went to Italy, by pretext indeed, on account of 
further Gaul, but in truth, that he might watch (icpedpevrj) as to what was 
going on in the city." 

Plutarch ("Caes.," 25) reports the reinforcement, but otherwise 
simply passes over the important events of 53, as his interest runs ahead 
to the great rising of the following year coupled with the name of 
Vercingetorix. 

What we glean from Cicero's letters is little. "We learn ("Fam.," 
7, 18, 3) that Balbus, the most trusted of all of Caesar's representatives 
at the seat of government, was to go to Caesar's headquarters, in April. 
The drift towards the rule of one man was becoming stronger.] 

In this year, Crassus perished in Mesopotamia. He 
had invaded Parthia purely from ambition. The catas- 
trophe came when he had crossed the Euphrates and was 



148 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

moving upon Seleucia. The remnants of his army were 
saved by his qusestor, C. Cassius, afterwards one of the 
slayers of Csesar. He also maintained Syria against the 
Parthians, who now became hereditary foes of Rome and 
the chief cloud on their eastern horizon. 

Crassus had received Syria by the lex Trebonia for five 
years. Cicero, later on, writing with philosophical delib- 
eration ("Fin.," 3, 75), ascribed the fatal expedition to 
the greed of the richest man in Rome. It was his domi- 
nant passion. Thus there remained but two dynasts in 
public life, and the great pact was in effect broken. 

In the incessant movement of unrest and disintegration 
at the capital, one thing was quite clear : The auctoritas 
of Ccesar and Pompey combined, even when Cicero as 
pleader carried out their commissions, sometimes suffered 
defeat. Such had been the case in the previous year, 
when Pompey's servitor, Gabinius, the former proconsul 
of Syria, was brought to trial for leaving his province and 
restoring Ptolemy Auletes, the king at Alexandria. His 
condemnation was accomplished, let us mark it, under the 
Lex lulia de Repetiindis.^ Not only had he perpetrated 
extortion in his own province, but he had moved beyond 
the confines thereof to wage a war not approved by the 
home government. He was condemned to pay a fine of 
10,000 talents, which was beyond his power. 

Cicero did not publish his defence of Gabinius. On 
Jan. 1, 53, no consuls were inaugurated. None had been 
chosen. Interregna were resorted to. It was not until 
July, 53, that Calvinus and Messalla became, for less than 
six months, the chief magistrates of the commonwealth. 
The orderly routine of the governmental machine was 
impeded, particularly by the tribuni plebis. Some of 
them we;-e playing for a dictatorship of the proconsul of 
Spain, who would act the Sphinx about his own preference. 
The conservatives abominated the idea of another dicta- 
1 Lange, 3, 358. 



CiESAR IN 53 B.C. 149 

torship. As between gigantic bribery and a system of 
organized riots, this may have appeared as the only way. 
The annual consuls, too, says Appian ("B. C," 2, 19), 
abandoned all personal hopes of provincial preferment, 
having been for some time hemmed in by the great pact 
now in process of dissolution. 

As for Pompey, whose perpetual ambition was to have 
every form of extraordinary power thrust upon him, he 
looked, supinely enough, upon the ever-growing disrup- 
tion and disorganization of the forms of the older republi- 
can city-state. 1 

To add to the tension of factional fury at Rome, Annius 
Milo, in 53, was making an active canvass for the consul- 
ate of 52 B.C. Cicero, one of the most grateful men in 
history, who recognized Milo's labors for his own restora- 
tion, and eager to repay these services, labored earnestly 
with all his political friends, such as he still had, to gain 
their interest for Milo. 

The advocate in this year, whenever he touched upon 
current affairs, did so with unmistakable self-repression 
and restraint, as though he dreaded the miscarriage of 
these missives. He, himself, to fortify his personal se- 
curity, not long before had accepted a legateship from his 
protector, Pompey, who, however, did not go to Spain at 
all. Nor did Cicero. As for brother Quintus in Belgium, 
Cicero had urged him to be doubly cautious as to any 
political passages which he, Quintus, might feel inclined 
to put into his epistles from Caesar's army. For Quintus, 
in a way, was a hostage to Caesar for the orator's tractable 
demeanor. It was quite well understood by all concerned. 
Consular candidates at Rome still rated Caesar's support 
as a weighty matter. ("Quint, fr.," 3, 8, 3-4.) Cicero 
abhorred a dictatorship, while Cato had actually dispensed 
with a province in order to remain on the ground and 

^ T^v da-vvra^lav T7j$ TroXtre/as Kal dvapx^av iirl ry a<rvvTa^lq, ckCjv iirepeJjpa, 
App., "B.C.,"2, 20. 



150 ANNALS OF CESAR 

counteract that policy.^ Everybody and everything 
seemed to be at cross-purposes. 

In the autumn, and up to Jan. 1, 52 B.C., no consular 
elections were actually carried through. The consuls 
were unable to accomplish this, though on one occasion 
they actually laid aside their senatorial garb and appeared 
in the senate in equestrian garb — a symbol of public 
mourning. They did, indeed, secure the passage of a 
S. C, providing that no ex-consul or ex-prgetor should 
receive a province until after the lapse of five years. ^ 
This, they hoped, might stem the ever-rising tide of those 
forms of electoral corruption now intricately bound up 
with all changes of magistrates. But this sound resolution 
was not enacted into law by any assemblies. Here, then, 
was a veritable agony of the body politic, as though the 
ancient city-republic could neither live nor die. 

If it were possible to register the annual data of elec- 
toral purchase, and all the other trade and barter carried 
on between the greater and the minor politicians ; if it 
were possible to gain a closer vision of the despicable 
electorate of the field of Mars, annually bought in all the 
tribes and precincts ; if, further, one could view closely 
the hopeless degradation of manhood and economic inde- 
pendence intricately bound up with the substratum of all 
social things, to wit, slaves and slave trade ; if, further, 
we could observe and feel in detail how the resources of 
the Mediterranean world in good part found their way to 
the imperial city by the Tiber, to help corrupt and pur- 
chase those who seemed to bestow office merely in order 
that this vicious circle might go on periodically revolving, 
— then, indeed, one may doubt whether that crazy machin- 
ery was worth preserving, and whether the so-called re- 
public had not itself become a hollow mockery and an 

1 Sulla's career was too fresh in the memory of that generation. 
Dio, 40, 45, 5. 
2Dio, 40, 46. 



CiESAR IN 53 B.C. 151 

empty sound, hallowed though its traditional forms seemed 
to be by great memories, and rendered illustrious by noble 
names and stern trials of the past. 

And we may add with unhesitating confidence, that of 
all the public men of that time and that day there was no 
one whose political vision grasped all these actualities, as 
well as their potentialities of sequence, more firmly, more 
coolly, and with deeper penetration than the proconsul of 
the northwest and visible head of the popularis party, so 
called, at home. 



CHAPTER XIV 

VERCINGETORIX THE AKVERNIAN, 52 B.C. 

On the first Kalends of the civic year 52, there was no 
Capitoline solemnity of new consuls, because there had 
not been any election. On Jan. 18, 52 (= Dec. 8 of solar 
year 53), Milo's gladiators dragged the wounded Clodius 
from a roadhouse near Bovillse on the Appian Way, and 
despatched him.^ The brawl which ended thus had been 
begun without any provocation but the long-nurtured sen- 
timents of mutual hatred and factional fury, by a gladia- 
tor in the retinue of the travelling Milo. The painstaking 
relation of facts, as given by Asconius, permits us to see 
how materially the pleader's cunning of the famous Arpi- 
nate perverted and obscured what had actually happened. 

The political consequences of that act were deep and 
far-reaching. As for Csesar and his ambition, Pompey's 
elevation to be consul without a colleague, and the power 
granted to Pompey to choose his own colleague later on, 
at his own discretion, while Pompey still held on to his 
Spanish imperium, — to C;«sar all these sequences were 
momentous and, in a way, threatening. 

At Rome all political parties, indeed, had been compelled 
to this elevation of the Only One, who thus appeared as 
the saviour of law and order. And here was the point 
where the two dynasts began to move on by different 
roads. There was now a new combination at Rome : 
Pompey and the Optimates. Bibulus^ had made the 

1 On the political history of this year, v. Asconius, "in Milonianam " ; 
"Att.,"5, 13, 1;6, 7, 26; 7,1,4; 7, 6,2;Liv., " Perioch.," 107 ; Dio, 40, 
48 ; Appian, "B. C," 2, 20 sqq. ; Plut., "Pomp.," 54 ; Suet., "Cses.," 
26, 27. 

2 Plut., "Pomp.," 54. 

152 



VERCINGETORIX THE ARVERNIAN 153 

first motion in the senate, and to the surprise of all it was 
Cato who had seconded it, saying that he would not, 
indeed, have made the motion himself on his own initia- 
tive, but as another had made it he deemed it proper to 
give it support, for any magistracy at all, no matter how 
extraordinary, was better than anarchy. What did Ccesar 
do ? What we now hear reminds us once more that the 
republic was a shadow, and that the personal acts of the 
dynasts were, and properly were reputed to be, decisive. 
In order to maintain ^ close relations with Pompey, he 
proposed to the latter a new matrimonial match, viz., his 
own grand-niece Octavia, who had been married to Gains 
Marcellus, and asked for himself the hand of Pompey's 
daughter, who had already been betrothed to Faustus 
Sulla. But Pompey chose Cgecilia Metella, the widow of 
young Crassus, an aristocratic lady of many graces and 
deeper culture. Ccfisar could draw his own inferences. 
But in the new shuffling of the cards preceding Pompey's 
novel elevation, Csesar had, through the joint action of 
all the ten tribunes, secured an important and far-reaching 
concession. 2 This was a plebiscitum, providing that Cce- 
sar, before his ten years' proconsular power expired, i.e.^ 
before March 1, 48 B.C., should, even while absent from 
Rome, have the privilege both of being a candidate and 
being voted for to obtain his second consulate. 

[There is much confusion among historians and antiquarians as to the 
exact point when Csesar's second quinquennium terminated. Time begins 
to run from the date of actual entry into a given province. So said Cicero 
(" Att.," 15, 1) of his province of Cilicia with adjacent districts: Laodi- 
ceam veni pridie Kal. Sext. (July 31). Ex hoc die clavum anni move- 
his ; i.e., my administrative year runs from July 31 to July 31, unless I 
am relieved before. Cf. "Fam.," 3, 6, 4 ; 15, 7, 2 ; 3, 8," 9; 3, 12, 4; 
"Att.," 6, 2, 6; 6, 5, 3.] 

Clearly, Caesar did not wish to be a mere private citizen: 
probably he dared not. In vain Cicero (" Fam.," 6, 6, 5) 

iSuet., "Caes.," 27. 
2 Suet., "Cses.," 26. 



154 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

dissuades Pompey against consenting to a privilege so 
unheard of, in vain urged Pompey to go to Spain. And 
still our literary friend yielded himself : before the expi- 
ration of the inclement season, at Ravenna, there was a 
conference between Csesar and Cicero, in which the latter 
pledged his interest and support toward this very measure. 

We cannot now know the exact time when Csesar over- 
whelmed the plehecula of Rome with bounties, gifts, and 
games. Suetonius (c. 26) relates these things as subse- 
quent to, and growing out of, the constitutional exemption 
which Caesar had just secured ; as though he was elated 
by sanguine expectations and eager to begin, even then, 
his canvass for his second consulate. We observe here 
that antiquarian precision so characteristic of Suetonius : 
Csesar, furthermore, began the building of a forum,i the 
land alone costing one hundred million sesterces, or about 
84,400,000. Also, in honor of his deceased daughter, Julia, 
he provided feasts and gladiatorial shows, with an elegance 
of the former, and with preliminary training as to the latter, 
such as the capital had not known before. Suetonius him- 
self 2 read letters of Caesar from the field, or from winter 
quarters, in which the proconsul requested particular sena- 
tors, or equestrian gentlemen as were expert swordsmen, 
to undertake the coaching of certain gladiators. 

For his legions, he doubled their pay. The masses of 
the electorate, therefore, and his own legionaries were his 
chief concern, the more so as he saw that Pompey, his only 
rival, was consenting to be the leader of the few. 



But we must turn again to the northwest. When 
Caesar crossed the Alps to the plains of the Po, Clodius 
was still living. It was only when he arrived there, 
that he received the news of the political homicide of the 

1 The Basilica lulia? 

2 He was imperial secretary under Hadrian. 



VERCINGETORIX THE ARVERNIAN 155 

Appian Way. Therefore, he must have left Transalpine 
Gaul late. He, too, now began a general conscription in 
the Po-country. The Kelts of the northwest, too, were 
promptly apprised of the grave disorders in Rome. They 
inferred that these would detain Caesar. Soon the general 
ferment spread through conferences and through an almost 
universal agitation. Dumnorix had perished : now another 
nobleman, Acco, had been put to death much more delib- 
erately by a verdict issued by the proconsul. 

Caesar's absence just then was a circumstance of splen- 
did possibilities. If die they must, why not rather die on 
the field, or in open warfare, for freedom? ("B. G.," 7, 
1, 8.) The Oarnutes (Genabum, Orleans) undertake to 
begin the insurrection with an overt act. The Roman 
citizens residing at Genabum are suddenly slain, and 
their possessions looted. With incredible swiftness the 
news is carried to every part of Gaul. From Orleans 
to the confines of the Auvergne is a distance of some 
one hundred and sixty miles. The vendetta at Genabum 
occurred at daybreak : before nine in the evening of that 
day, the news of the massacre had travelled so far. Among 
the Arverni, then, the movement for freedom found for its 
leader the Hotspur of Keltic annals, Vercingetorix. His 
ancestors must have stood in the foreground of Gallic 
nobles. His father, Keltillus, had striven for central 
monarchy and perished in this ambition. Vercingetorix 
was temporarily expelled from Gergovia,^ but soon, stir- 
ring up the common people and the serfs, he gained so 
irresistible a leadership among the Arverni that he was 
proclaimed their king. Embassies flew in all directions. 
From Paris to Cahors, and from the western slopes of the 
Cevennes to the Atlantic, flared up the flames of national 
insurrection. Vercingetorix was proclaimed generalissimo 
of all the Keltic levies. To wonderful energy he added 
stern and severe penalties for insubordination. Csesar, 
1 Six kilometres south of Clermont. 



156 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

indeed, suggests that the cruelty of his disciplinary meas- 
ures enabled him so quickly to raise an army : this we 
may well doubt. Soon the Bituriges joined the national 
rising. The JEdui dared not cross the Loire, and con- 
strain these neighbors in the interest of Caesar. All these 
things were accomplished when Caesar was still on the 
upper Adriatic, perhaps at Ravenna. Rome was now, 
however, safe : the virtus of Pompey had secured it from 
further demoralization. 

[His leges de amhitu and de vi had been adopted. Csesar could return 
to the Transalpine. He intimates that he could not have done so, if no 
settlement had been achieved at the capital. In the introductory words 
of "B. G.," 7, 1, the other dynast is treated with deliberate and diplo- 
matic courtesy. It is not likely that these ivords, and so the entire pre- 
ceding relation of Ccesar, loere penned after the beginning of the Civil 
War.-] 

The insurrection in the northwest, meanwhile, spread 
fast. The Ruteni (Rodez) in the furthest south came in. 
And now the very Province was in jeopardy. Csesar did 
not rest until he reached Narbo. There, indeed, he was 
in the capital of the old province. Looking northward, 
across a boiling ocean of national rising, he might, indeed, 
have felt as if all his work of six years had been undone 
in two short months.^ 

Between Cevennes and lower Rhone were the Helvii, 
within the old province. It was still winter (c. 8) when 
Caesar moved and began this long and critical campaign. 
He marched northeastward, crossing the Cevennes long 
before the snow had melted, amid great harrdship. Clearly 
the Arverni were surprised : even a solitary single traveller 
was not expected to traverse the passes of the mountains 
in that forbidding season. For the first time the Arverni, 
as a community, were given a sharp taste of Roman devas- 
tation, and Vercingetorix moved south from Orleans. 
Caesar had planned it so. Leaving Decimus Brutus in 

1 January and February : corrected calendar. 



VERCINGETORIX THE ARVERNIAN 157 

charge of this southern corps, and concealing his motive 
and design, he hastened to Vienne on the Rhone in forced 
marches. His immediate and urgent task was to take 
personal command of the ten legions which he had left in 
the preceding autumn, in three divisions, in the north, 
east, and northeast, viz., in the country of the Treveri, 
Senones, and Lingones. The two legions wintering in 
the plateau of Langres he reached first ; they were near- 
est. From this point, swift despatches flew to those en- 
camped on the Moselle and at Sens. Thus he concen- 
trated these ten legions, splendid veteran corps, before the 
Arverni and the national leader himself were even aware 
of his personal movements. On learning of these things, 
they were compelled at once to abandon their threatening 
of the Roman province, and to move northward. They 
now proceeded to lay siege to G-orgohina} town of the 
Boii, whom six years before Csesar had spared, placing 
them in vassalage of the JEdui. Should the proconsul 
allow this place to fall ? Would he not, then, alienate the 
^dui and the Remi themselves? Leaving his base of 
Agedincum(Sens), he took Vellauno-dunum, and hastened 
in two days marches to Genabum. Here the torch of the 
national rising had been first kindled. In vain the people 
attempted to escape across the Loire, southward, by night. 
The town, for an example, was sacked and burned : "the 
loot given to the soldiers." 

[Is this, perhaps, one of the cases of which Suetonius (c. 26) speaks : 
singula interdum mancipia e prseda viritim dedit : each soldier could sell 
one prisoner to the mercatores who ever moved with Caesar's headquarters, 
— and pocket the proceeds ?] 

Caesar does not stop here to utter any note as of the 
vindication of justice on the doomed place, no appeal here, 
as in other books, to Roman pride at all. Thus Ctesar 
drew his young antagonist away from the siege of Gorgo- 

1 Site of which is a matter of great controversy among the French anti- 
quarians. 



158 ANNALS OF CAESAR 

bina toward himself, too late, however, to save JVoviodu- 
num. Caesar now turned to besiege Avaricum^ the largest 
and best fortified town of the Bituriges, on the river 
Avar a (Evre). 

Vercingetorix, whose prestige had obviously suffered 
severely through this series of reverses, now attempted a 
new policy. Not yet was the grass or grain far enough 
advanced to furnish forage, it was probably some time in 
April ; the Romans had to procure from hamlets and 
homesteads hay of the year 53 B.C. The son of Keltillus 
now proposed that the patriots burn homesteads and 
towns, and so deprive the Romans of subsistence, com- 
pelling them to move away through the potent argument 
of starvation. They heeded this stern counsel : soon 
more than twenty -five fortified towns of the Bituriges lay 
in ashes. 

What of Avaricum ? Against his own better judg- 
ment, the national leader consented to its preservation, 
yielding to the pitiful entreaties of the inhabitants. The 
proconsul now proceeded to a systematic assault upon this, 
one of the fairest towns of all the Kelts, he suffering not 
a little, meanwhile, from a lack of grain. As for the 
jEdui, brothers of the Roman people, they were not much 
in earnest. 

The morale, however, of those seasoned veterans whom 
he had so long and so systematically attaclied to his per- 
son and to his fortunes, was fine. They clamored for 
signal retribution for what had happened at Genabum, in 
the waning winter. Meanwhile, the heroic Arvernian, 
suffering from the very desolation which he had himself 
caused, was compelled to move nearer to Csesar. The 
Kelts, never good at long hardships, clamored for a gen- 
eral battle. Vercingetorix, however, although his own 
loyalty was impugned by their impatience, yielded not his 
better judgment to their importunities. To calm their 
passionate urging he even resorted to a ruse : he exhibited 



VERCINGETORIX THE ARVERNIAN 159 

to them some Roman prisoners, emaciated and miserable 
of countenance, by whom they could readily infer that 
Caesar's troops were on the verge of starvation. 

Meanwhile Ctesar's works were steadily carried forward ; 
on both sides consummate devotion was shown, and every 
resource brought into play of meeting device with device 
and mechanism with mechanism. The proconsul's own ad- 
miration was warmly roused (7, 25) at the sight of an occur- 
rence of rare self-sacrifice, when a long series of defenders 
fell, man after man, at a critical point, while engaged in a 
desperate effort to nourish the fire that was to ruin the siege- 
works of the foreigners. An attempt of the defenders to 
withdraw quietly by night was betrayed to the Romans 
by loud lamentation of the women and children. 

At last the Romans took the town by a general assault, 
and so embittered were the legionaries that they gave no 
quarter, sparing not even women and children. Out of 
forty thousand, but eight hundred made good their escape 
into the national camp. The leader could truthfully point 
to the notorious fact that the defence of Avaricum had 
been undertaken and persisted in against his own counsels. 
In engineering, indeed, the superiority of the Romans was 
well known. It was time now to imitate Roman methods 
in the regular construction of well-fortified camps. Soon 
he would bring into the national movement all the states 
still outstanding. 

The fall of Avaricum indeed, as it proved, added much 
to the national reputation of the noble Arvernian. Still, 
the inclement season was barely over, almost^ over, when 
all this had been accomplished. The tremendous energy, 
coupled with penetration of judgment, of the towering 
Julius, is once more impressed upon us. Would any other 
man in public life have accomplished so much ? One may 
frankly say that probably every other one would have 
failed in this desperate crisis. 

1 Hieme prope conf ecta. 



160 ANNALS OF CiESAR 

Being on the point of beginning his regular summer 
campaign (7, 32), the governor of Gaul was for the mo- 
ment interrupted by the necessity of settling disputed 
elections for vergohret among his own ^dui. This he did 
in strict conformity with law and precedent, as held in 
that important community. Also we observe, for once, 
precisely what advantage the proconsul derived from the 
resources of this Romanizing commonwealth : a contin- 
gent of ten thousand J^duans, in several details, was to 
guard his various grain depots, while their entire body of 
squires, or cavalry, was employed by Caesar in the field. 

Labienus, Avith four legions, was to maintain the middle 
and upper Seine, while he in person, with six legions, was 
to move upon the commonwealth which was the national 
leader's own, that of the Arverni. So quickly had this 
great captain wrought the great change from the defen- 
sive to the offensive. 

For a while the Arvernian prevented Caesar from cross- 
ing to the right bank of the Allier (^Maver), but Caesar 
soon outwitted him. He had no time to bear with any 
Fabian strategy of his adversary. The trend of things at 
Rome, as well as his own temperament and the manifold 
necessities clustering around his advancing ambition, pos- 
tulated speed and the uttermost measure of energy. But 
still, after Caesar had begun a systematic siege of Grergo- 
via, — investment alone seemed feasible, the idea of a 
storming assault appearing preposterous, — and after he 
furthermore had gained an isolated elevation which ulti- 
mately seemed to control the water supply, then, for the 
second time in his campaigns since 58 B.C., the execution 
of his plans was crossed by the wards of Rome, his own 
^dui. — Was the vergohret Convictolitavis bribed by the 
Arverni ? Caesar, indeed, says so (7, 37) ; also that the 
jEduan magistrate shared this fund with several young 
noblemen ; that to one of these, Litaviccus, he entrusted 
the command of the ^duan contingent of ten thousand 



VERCINGETORIX THE ARVERNIAN 161 

infantry even then in process of mobilization. Further, 
that while on the march to Gergovia, Litaviccus halted 
his troops and wrought them up to a pitch of excitement 
by telling them falsehoods^ of fresh acts of sanguinary 
cruelty on the part of Caesar towards noblemen of their 
own commonwealth. This halting and this mendacious 
appeal (if, indeed, we may trust C^sar in every detail) 
took place some thirty miles from Gergovia. 

It was a histrionic performance, according to Caesar, 
but several Roman citizens, too, were slain in this fury. 

[Did Caesar's adversaries always put themselves in the wrong ? But 
their own version of things has not been preserved.] 

These same untruths were forthwith scattered broadcast 
throughout the commonwealth of the .^duans. Caesar, 
informed of these things by an ^duan nobleman, marched 
twenty-five miles to intercept the ^Eduan contingent, which 
he spared, but Litaviccus had flown. Only a three hours' 
rest was granted to his troops : thus they marched fifty 
miles with a moderate pause midway. Meanwhile, Fa- 
bius with his two legions had defended the ample stockade 
(built for six legions) with extreme and desperate diffi- 
culty and endurance. 

During this time the ^duan commonwealth and vergo- 
hret had thrown off the bonds of Rome, and Convictolita- 
vis indeed had striven that those things should be done 
which would render impossible any restoration of the 
ancient relations. Still, they soon learned that ten thou- 
sand ^duan lives were at the proconsul's discretion, and 
the latter assumed a studied moderation in dealing with 
the envoys who hastened to his headquarters at Gergovia. 

He indeed was now planning to abandon the siege of 
this town : even his stout and clear mind began to yield 

1 Dr. Holmes, p. 120, appropriates Caesar's relation without qualifica- 
tion, adding even a contemptuous phrase of his own : " V. had offered him 
a bribe ; and he promptly responded to that most potent spur of Gallic 
patriotism." Bona verba, quaeso ! 

M 



162 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

to the sense of an isolation, which was well-nigh complete. 
He seriously entertained a plan of summoning the four 
legions of Labienus, and then withdrawing leisurely, sav- 
ing his prestige as far as possible. We cannot trace in 
detail the various vicissitudes of these operations : what 
resource his keen eye discovered, how the enthusiasm of 
his advancing troops went far beyond his orders and 
ignored the signals for retreat. The site of Gergovia^ 
was lofty : Cpesar had merely intended taking the outer 
lines of defence. Clearly he decided not to overcome 
difficulties of topography (7, 52, 2) by any considerable 
sacrifice of his own infantry. 

At this stage of current events, too, it would prove in- 
creasingly difficult to replace legions through the compli- 
ance of the home government as now modified. This he 
knew. 

Even more than before, therefore, the situation seemed 
to postulate (7, 53) that retreat which then engaged the 
burden of his military reflections. For several days, 
therefore, he offered a pitched battle to the King of the 
Arvernians. This one, however, wisely persisted in his 
Fabian policy. 

For once, then, Csesar abandoned a great military enter- 
prise, and moving eastward crossed the Allier and passed 
into the territory of the one-time brothers of the Roman 
people. 

His strategical faculty and the elemental powers of his 
rare character had been tested as never before ; it was 
well-nigh midsummer, and he apparently was as far as 
ever from mastering the great insurrection. And now, as 
if the very knell of his great plans were being rung, there 
fell upon him another blow, the most severe one almost in 
all this troublesome and critical year. It was in this wise : 
even those two young noblemen who had so promptly ad- 

1 On a spur of the mountains of Auvergne, about four miles south of 
Clermont Ferrand. 



VERCINGETORIX THE ARVERNIAN 163 

vised him of the plot of the vergohret and of the defection 
of the ^dui, even these now joined the mighty movement 
of the Keltic world. They seized Noviodunum (Nevers) 
on the Loire, a little above the confluence off Allier. 
Here Caesar had placed his remounts, grain, the funds 
furnished by the home government, and, above all, the 
entire hostages of Gaul. All were lost to the proconsul 
by one fell stroke of fortune. 

By this service, the two young ^duan noblemen 
Eporedorix and Viridomarus signalized their entry into 
the irresistible movement of the national union. For 
Caesar, indeed, an unbroken chain of successes seemed an 
imperative necessity, and the abandonment of the siege of 
Gergovia had apparently removed the last prop of that 
tottering fabric : the loyalty, or fear, of the Kelts enter- 
tained for the dread name of Rome. It was generally 
believed that Csesar would be compelled to move south 
and to seek supplies, as well as a base for new operations 
within the confines of the old province. 

The first important matter was, that Labienus brought 
back, victoriously, across the Seine, his four legions and 
joined Csesar (7, 62). 

In the meantime, when the national enthusiasm had 
reached great intensity, the Arvernian, by request, visited 
the JEdui. But their desire to assume national leader- 
ship was denied by the universal voice of the Keltic world. 
A diet at Bibracte, by some kind of vote of national 
representatives, so decided : Vercingetorix was unani- 
mously declared leader of all. This gifted and patriotic 
man determined to maintain his policy of avoiding a 
general battle and destroying all supplies about Caesar's 
movements ; also he planned to have minor invasions 
made into the old province. Momentarily (7, Q3) the 
proconsul was cut off from the south, from the old pro- 
vince, and from Italy. 

And now he himself, obedient to necessity, began mov- 



164 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

ing towards the Sequani (Burgundy). His ultimate aim 
was a defensive position to bar the foe from the province. 
This seemed all that was left from this campaign. Ver- 
cingetorix kept near him, but now, at last, he resolved to 
stop and destroy the ever-returning invader, if he could. 
But Csesar, attacked while marching, defeated Vercin- 
getorix with heavy loss : Csesar's new cavalry of German 
mercenaries contributed decisively to this result. His 
mounted men being completely scattered, the national 
leader marched to the neighborhood of Alesia} a town on 
a plateau of exceptional strength for defence, the fateful 
trap of Keltic freedom. 

Why did Vercingetorix not escape to the north ? 
Csesar surrounded at once, both the plateau-town, as well 
as the forces of Vercingetorix, with a circumvallation of 
eleven miles. Why did not the Arvernian burst through? 
Little doubt but that, after his first positive defeat in 
open battle, when that part of the forces on which he and 
the public opinion of the nation had relied with such con- 
fidence, — the mounted aristocracy of the Keltic people — 
had been utterly routed, little doubt but that then there 
came a reaction and a tremendous reversal of feeling, both 
in the actual army of Vercingetorix as well as elsewhere, 
throughout the land. 

As for the foot-soldiers, they were accustomed to look 
for guidance and encouragement to their knights and 
barons. These had failed them. They would probably 
have been scattered and destroyed in detail, if the ridges 
of Mt. Auxois had not furnished a temporary haven of 
security and recuperation. — Still Vercingetorix suc- 
ceeded, before the Roman investment was complete, in 
despatching to all parts of Gaul mounted messengers pro- 
claiming a national levy. 

The doles of daily rations were now carefully measured 
out, and the utmost economy practised until the nation 
1 St. Beine d'Alise; v. Holmes, 361-374. 



VERCINGETORIX THE ARVERNIAN 165 

should relieve Alesia. — The proconsul immediately con- 
structed an outer ring of defences with exquisite and 
clearly thought-out features of engineering (7, 29 sq.), 
which must not be set down here in detail. For there 
were before his clear mind three matters : first, to hold 
an inner ring of investment; next, to maintain such a 
one against the coming forces of national relief ; and 
thirdly, to man all lines with such numbers as he had, 
many portions being made inaccessible through engineer- 
ing to balance his deficiencies of fighting men. The outer 
ring was one of fourteen miles. 

The leaders of the cantons and commonwealths of 
Gaul meanwhile modified the general orders of their self- 
trapped captain general. They prescribed more moderate 
but specific contingents of the choicest forces for the vari- 
ous states, with their several vassal-communities attached. 
This list (7, 75) seems to afford a fair survey of the rela- 
tive rank and importance of these ethnical and political 
subdivisions of the Keltic nation. In the first class were 
the ^dui with their dependencies, and the Arverni with 
the same ; in the next class, after a considerable interval, 
were the Sequani^ Senones^ Bituriges^ Santonin Ruteni^ and 
Carnutes; next followed the Bellovaci and the Lemovices, 
and so on down the scale. Even the Helvetii were sum- 
moned. Local jealousies cropped out, as of the Bellovaci, 
who would lead, but on the whole the Kelts made a bet- 
ter showing, a far more unanimous showing, than did the 
Greeks in the Persian wars. 

The marvellous rapidity with which thus a force of 
two hundred and fifty thousand infantry and eight thou- 
sand knights and barons were put into the field, com- 
mands our surprise and admiration. Again had the 
national feeling reached a high point of sanguine antici- 
pations. But during this time the lives cooped up in 
Alesia were coming nearer and nearer to bitter famine, 
nay starvation. There were not lacking voices of des- 



166 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

perate resolution which proposed that they subsist upon 
the bodies of those who, through age or weakness, must 
needs be non-combatants. 

The townsfolk offered their submission, as slaves, to the 
Romans of the inner ring : but Caesar compelled them to 
totter back. At last the national levies arrived : a flutter 
of joy and hope for the anxious hearts up on the plateau 
of Alesia. In vain, however, were the efforts both of 
those who were without, as well as of those who, pitiably 
enfeebled, tried to snap asunder the steel band of the inner 
ring. Catapults and engineering helped mightily in Cae- 
sar's maintenance of his double lines ; still more perhaps, 
by the fact that to each one, as though by rehearsal, his 
place and duty had been assigned in advance, the element 
of chance being very largely eliminated. ^ 

Finally, a supreme effort was made by the relief force 
to gain a critical point, but here too, after heroic efforts, 
the coolness and generalship of the proconsul prevailed. 
The national levies departed in disorder and Vercingetorix 
in person offered himself to the discretion of his victor. 

The struggle of Gaul was over, in the main : Caesar 
himself, at this point, laid down his own pen. It is 
impressively clear, even from the brief clauses and their 
rapid sequence in the last three chapters, that he was con- 
sciously hastening to conclude these " Notes'' on the Gallic 
campaigns. 

The two leading states of the ^dui and Arverni (as 
represented in the forces starving in the trap of Alesia) 
were exempted by him from the common sequence of 
captivity, viz., slavery, ^ if through these,'' i.e.^ through this 
signal and magnanimous exception, ' he might recover their 
states' ; even here, we admit, this uncommon man forsook 
not that appeal to the sense of gratitude, which appeal, for 
his temperament and the very essence of his being, was the 
favored policy and mode of procedure. 

1 Cf. 6, 32. 



VERCINGETORIX THE ARVERNIAN 167 

[Dio reproduces this, the chief year of the GallicWar, in 40, 33 sqq. 
Here, too, his summaries are often permeated with high intelligence and 
with incessant attention to Caesar's motives and designs. But in detail 
his work is often loose: e.gr., of the siege of Avaricum 40, 34: 6 yap 
xeiixibv iv€i<rTrjK€L — is utterly faulty of spring : quite incorrect, too, is his 
relation as to the bridge over the Allier : cf. Dio, 40, 35, 3, with Cses., 
"B. G.," 7, 35, 5. — The Gergovia episode is presented quite clearly. 
He even interprets Caesar's failure there more plausibly (this is rare) 
than Csesar himself, viz., as due to the advantages of site (40, 36, 3). 

The departure of Eporedorix and Viridomarus, Dio tells with an eluci- 
dation furnished simply by his own reflexion, creating, as it were, data 
(40, 38, 2) which fairly can neither be derived nor inferred from the text 
of Caesar. 

The movement, after the untoward events of Noviodunum, towards 
the province, towards the Allobroges, Dio (39, 1) presents as due to the 
initiative of Vercingetorix himself, as though the latter had now been 
holding Csesar cheap in consequence of the reverses suffered by the same 
in this year. Dio, in short, everywhere seems inspired by a certain am- 
bition to present the facts indeed, but in a light, and in a sequence, or 
dependence, furnished by Dio himself : he is not content with the modest 
role of a mere transcriber. E.g., the defeat suffered by the Keltic gen- 
eralissimo before he was cooped up at Alesia, was due (Dio, 39, 2) to the 
excessive numbers, and to the audacity of the same. 

This expansion, within the entire range of motive and design, is the 
earmark of Dio : sometimes this is truly luminous and helpful, but at 
other times it impresses us as merely arbitrary and fanciful. So too of 
the starving townspeople of Alesia : that these, having been turned back 
from the Roman lines, " perished in the most heartrending m'anner," is 
merely Dio's inference. 

The details of the personal surrender of Vercingetorix reads like some 
picturesque passage in Livy, and in fact may be due to Livy. A dramatic 
scene : how the chivalrous Arvernian suddenly appeared without any pre- 
vious heralding of his coming, while Csesar was sitting on the bema 
( = pro suggestu) . The Keltic chieftain was a man of towering size, and 
at that moment splendidly accoutred in full armor ; how he knelt before 
the proconsul, mutely petitioning with compressed hands. How Csesar 
rejoined with words, scoring him as an ingrate, and without the slightest 
pity immediately had him put in bonds, and later on reserved him for his 
triumph and subsequent execution (46 b.c). 

Plutarch ("Cses.," 25 sqq.) deeply feels the momentous importance 
of the great movement under Vercingetorix, and remarks, acutely enough, 
that, if the latter had but bided his time until Csesar was deeply engaged 
In the Civil War, Italy would have been in the grip of a panic not slighter 
than that of the Cimbrian times. Plutarch had the curious item of the 
dagger taken from Csesar in the battle before the retreat of Vercingetorix 
to Alesia, and still exhibited by the Arverni. 



168 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

The summaries «in c. 27 greatly exceed Caesar's own figures. Also 
there are picturesque passages which probably point to Livy. Such is 
the detail of the splendid loot captured by the Romans from the relief 
corps outside (27, 4). The surrender of Vercingetorix is (as in Dio) re- 
lated with full detail of the personal appearance of the national leader. 

The correspondence of Cicero in 52 is slender and insignificant. It 
seems doubtful whether even by the well-informed at the capital any 
clear conception was gained or even desired, of the tremendous struggle 
beyond the Alps. Vercingetorix certainly would have had many well- 
wishers among the old aristocrats, who now, in the new adjustment of 
political forces, were looking to Pompey for guidance. ] 



CHAPTER XV 

C^SAR IN 51 B.C. 

Soon after Dec. 10, 52, Cicero prosecuted Munatius 
Plancus Bursa, a tribune, who, on that date, had com- 
pleted his official year. Bursa had been conspicuous 
among the men who, out of the slaying of Clodius, had 
striven to create still further turbulence and disorder. 
In this matter Cicero defied — at least he flattered himself 
that he did — the influence of Pompey. Besides, this 
Plancus Bursa had a brother Lucius, a legate in the field 
with Caesar. — Cato, by the by, was on that jury, but was 
stricken off, and excused from serving, when he, literally, 
closed his ears while Pompey's good character of the 
defendant was read. Still the jury in the end gave their 
verdict for Cicero. ^ And the great moral prestige of the 
most righteous and the most fearless man in public life 
had condemned the culprit not any less effectively, al- 
though Cato was not allowed to hear with the others and 
put his tessera into one of the jars. Exile was the penalty. 
But Bursa did not go into exile. Technically perhaps, 
but not really and actually. He went, indeed, beyond 
the political confines of Italy proper, to Ravenna. Csesar 
was there, and from him Bursa received a very substan- 
tial purse. So the proconsul practically nullified current 
acts of the same government. Caesar was a veritable 
refuge to men of this class, men who as instrumental 
politicians had done work for some one of the dynasts 
before, and would do it again. A teeming array of tasks 
was even then in the lap of the future, in Caesar's mind. 

1 ' Quod f ecissent numquam, nisi iis dolori fuisset meus dolor. ' Cic, 
*'ram.," 7, 2, 3. 

169 



170 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

The political future of Rome, so he was resolved, in a 
way, was not merely to be modified, but actually modelled 
and made by him. 

These events, straws in the political winds of the hour, 
occurred, probably, early in 51 B.C. The new consuls 
were Servius Sulpicius Rufus and M. Claudius Marcellus. 
Neither of these was a Caesarian. The noble character of 
the eminent civilian, Sulpicius Rufus, would have spurned 
any dependency on Csesar bound up with place or profit. 
As for M. Marcellus, a fellow-pupil of Cicero's adolescence, 
the political aversion which he had entertained for Csesar 
was so deep and so freely pronounced, that the very fact 
of his election must have been like a trumpet signal of 
warning to Csesar and to the Csesarians, both at home and 
in the field. M. Marcellus had, even before the election, 
announced as his programme the cutting short of Caesar's 
power. And on Jan. 1, 51, Pompey himself looked upon 
a capital and a home government which, in great measure, 
he himself had turned against the proconsul of the north- 
west. 

The lex Pompeia (of 52) de provinciis'^ provided that 
henceforward five years must elapse before ex-prsetors 
and ex-consuls could begin provincial administration. If 
events had progressed smoothly, and if Caesar, after the 
expiration of his long proconsulate, had peaceably gained 
a second consulate, he would have found himself some- 
what resourceless at the end of his consular year. And 
still, not long afterward, Pompey had his own proconsu- 
late of all Spain prolonged by a second term of five years. 
But two dynasts now remained seated at the political 
game, which latter gained not only in simplicity and 
definiteness, but also in accelerating intensity. 

Not only Spain did Pompey receive for another quin- 

1 Lange, 3, 376. This was the S. C. of 53, which Pompey, a year 
afterward, had ratified by the Comitia. /xiKpov efxirpoadev says Dio quite 
accurately, 40, 56. 



CiESAR IN 51 B.C. 171 

quennium, but also a fund of one thousand talents ^ for his 
military expenditures. 

The energies both of the ostensible annual government 
as well as the schemings and strivings of the parties, were 
now more and more centering upon this one question: to 
balance — what ? The political and material power and re- 
sources of whom ? Of two citizens, very powerful citizens. 
But still citizens. Was this a patriotic struggle ? But that 
was the concern of a very small number of persons. The 
miser a plehecula had no genuine conception of so vague 
and metaphysical things as patriotism and constitutional 
law. Donatives, feasts, free things generally, concerned 
them somewhat more. This was made impressively man- 
ifest in recent events. For during 52, Cato, himself, had 
been a candidate for the consulate, and it was ^ his inten- 
tion, if not the very avowal of his personal canvass, ' at 
once to deprive Csesar of his arms,' ^.e.,to have the senate 
vote to send him a successor before the ten years came to 
an end. Or, at least, he expected to succeed in this : he 
would prove and demonstrate Caesar's design : design for 
what, Plutarch specifies not ; but it is easy for any one 
familiar with the great stoic to complete the statement. 
It was the design for a throne, a monarchy, a dictatorship 
for life. On Feb. 15, 44, but seven years later, Csesar 
tried for the emblems, even, of oriental monarchy. As a 
guardian of the older constitution, Cato was right, and 
his canvass was in conformity with all his professions as 
well as all his political conduct. But Cato's failure, in 
itself, had been an eloquent commentary on the hopeless 
chasm which now separated the noble stoic from his own 
times, may I say from his own commonwealth, such as it 
actually was. The senate, at his request, had adopted a 
Resolution particularly intended for that canvass : viz., 
that the candidates should have no electoral agents, but 

iPlut. "Pomp.," 55. 

2 Plut., " Cat. Min.," 49, 50. Dio, 4 c, 58. Caes., " B. C," 1, 4. 



172 ANNALS OF CAESAR 

should seek votes in person. Further, Cato had bribed 
no one, nor provided for any bribing in his own behalf. 
This greatly exasperated the misera plebecula, and he was 
defeated. When Cicero wrote his biographical eulogy of 
this rare man, he censured him in it for not having con- 
sented to conduct his canvass along the usual and popular 
lines, in that crisis which called for just such a head of the 
state as he would have proved. ^ What might have been is 
by no means without deep concern for the student of hu- 
man affairs, however indifferent it may be for the prac- 
tical person, so called. Cicero, then, writing in 46 B.C., 
entertained a strong belief that a Catonian consulate might 
have obviated a civil war, by having adopted a S. C. for 
Caisar's recall in 51 B.C. Would Caesar have been obe- 
dient to such a Senatus Consultum ? Would Pompey have 
gagged Caesar's tribunes ? 

Clearly, whatever would have happened afterward, the 
electors for 51, untoward as they were for Caesar's interest, 
would have been vastly more threatening to his power and 
ambition, if Cato had been chosen. 



And now we will once more turn to Gaul. The relation 
of the campaigns of 51-50 was composed after Caesar's 
assassination, by one of his staff officers and personal 
admirers, Aulus Hirtius. With Balbus and Oppius he 
was of the clover leaf of the innermost circle. — As re- 
gards the pen and purpose of Hirtius, it will be presented 
to the reader later on in the chapter dealing with the 
Supplementary Accounts. Hence we now at once resume 
the further story of the Keltic insurrection. It remains 
impressive and significant that the great catastrophe of 
Alesia did not at once and forever terminate all resistance 
among the Kelts. 

Leaving Mark Antony in command of the winter quar- 

1 alTiarai bk KcKepwv Sri /c.r.X. Plut., "Cat. Min.," 50. 



f CiESAR IN 51 B.C. 173 

ters, Caesar (" B. G.," 8, 2), on Dec. 31 (really in Novem- 
ber), 52, with a detachment of cavalry rode away from 
Bibracte, the chief town of the ^dui. To these, as to 
the Arverni, the two foremost commonwealths among the 
Gauls, he had restored twenty thousand prisoners of war, 
an act of politic grace. Evidently, he had reestablished 
his personal hold upon the brothers of the Roman people. 
Perhaps the noted druid was dead, but no doubt the Ro- 
manists had recovered their sway in the councils of that 
government. Csesar had determined not to cross the 
Alps, but to winter at Bibracte. But the risings in vari- 
ous parts of Gaul interfered with this programme. One 
legion and no more was to be quartered among the Bituri- 
ges. Now these were not cowed by recalling the terrible 
fate of Avaricum but eight months before, and so they had 
begun acts of war against this one legion. One marvels 
at their persistence. But so unforeseen was Caesar's cav- 
alry raid, and so effective were his measures of checking 
any flight to their neighbors, that they were glad to throw 
themselves upon his mercy. 

After promising a splendid bounty to his troops for this 
winter's work, Caesar, within forty days, returned to the 
JEduan capital. But eighteen days later he was again 
summoned forth : the Bituriges complained of incursions 
by their northerly neighbors, the Carnutes. Among these 
Caesar promptly spread his troops, and the Carnutes were 
scattered to seek shelter among the contiguous states amid 
the privations of the winter season. 

But there was not yet general composure among his un- 
willing subjects. The Bellovaci (Beauvais) were active to 
annoy the Suessiones, who had been made a dependency of 
the Romanist Remi, by Caesar's shrewd policy. — These 
were large concerns, and they impressed the proconsul, 
for the greater part of the Belgae were actually enrolled 
under the leadership of the Bellovaci ; steps also had 
been taken to invite German bands. 



174 ANNALS OF CiESAR ^ 

As the foe held back, the proconsul built a camp of 
uncommon strength, he desiring to make them believe 
that he was cautious and felt unsafe. This sanguine and 
confident feeling of the natives rose steadily in the minor 
skirmishes which now daily ensued. The expectant Ger- 
man allies were said to be on the march. The proconsul, 
in turn, awaited the arrival of three further legions, 
commanded by Trebonius. The natives, apprehensive, if 
they remained, of a fate like that of Alesia, began to move 
away, and for once they outwitted Csesar by a clever ruse 
and encamped ten miles further on. From this new base 
they prepared an ambuscade for Caesar's foragers, but as 
Csesar was fully apprised in advance, they were caught in 
their own trap, and their leader, Correus himself, head of 
the whole insurrection, perished in a shower of Roman 
darts (8, 19). The Bellovaci now offered submission, and 
the proconsul, although he doubted the solidity of their 
excuses, determined to accept hostages. Commius, the 
Atrebatian, second leader in this rising, made good his 
escape in the end. 



The tasks which still remained were apparently of 
minor importance. Once more Ceesar in person ravaged 
the territory of the never-captured Ambiorix, to make his 
name a very curse to those Eburones who still remained. 
Into the country of the ever-dangerous Treveri Labienus 
was sent. 

Again trouble was reported from those sections of Gaul 
which later were called Anjou and Poitiers, north and 
south of the lower Loire. Here, too, the more impetuous 
and nationalist tribe invaded their neighbors' land for 
being more submissive. ^ 

1 Hirtius (c. 26) more plainly and clearly brings out the fact that a 
certain community was called the state of such and such a one; thus 
the Pictones with their capital Lemonum were the civitas Duratii. 



CiESAR IN 51 B.C. 175 

Caninius, Caesar's deputy-commander in the south 
among the Ruteni, advanced north, but was not strong 
enough to raise the siege of Lemonum. When, however, 
his colleague, Fabius, came nearer, Bomnacus, the duke of 
the Andes, abandoned the investment of the town and 
made haste to escape to the northern bank of the Loire. 
The Roman cavalry engaged and held the Kelts until the 
infantry of Fabius came up, when a great rout of the 
Andes ensued, some twelve thousand being slain and all 
the baggage taken. 

Fabius now promptly marched into the country of the 
Carnutes, who thought best to make their submission by 
hostages : their example was followed by the North At- 
lantic States, called collectively Aremorica. There re- 
mained a band of marauding Kelts, desperate men, escaped 
serfs, exiles from different communities, led by a certain 
Drappes. This irregular corps abandoned their project 
of invading the Roman province and, as a last resort, 
flung themselves into the mountain fastness of Uxello- 
dunum.^ This seemed, indeed, an impregnable position, 
but again Alesia's awful fate loomed up large before the 
apprehensions of the natives. They therefore took vigor- 
ous measures to provision their stronghold abundantly 
(8, 34). But the Romans surjDrised one of these trains, 
and one of the two chief leaders fled abroad. Half of the 
work seemed to be done, when Fabius arrived with his 
legions to join in the siege. Meanwhile the proconsul 
quit the north, leaving Antony, his quaestor, to maintain 
his principals power among the Bellovaci. Moving 
southward, Csesar halted among the Carnutes, where the 
great national rising of 52 B.C. had begun. As chief cul- 
prit, by general opinion, was named a certain Cotuatus. 
He was lashed into insensibility and then beheaded. It 

1 Dr. Holmes examines the various conjectures of topographical verifi- 
cation, pp. 493-504, at the end of which survey he is not quite sure him- 
self. 



176 ANNALS OF CESAR 

was here that Caesar heard of the resistance of Uxello- 
dunum. To his larger view it was a grave and disquiet- 
ing symptom of obstinacy. He computed always the 
spirit of men. He was eager to make an end there and to 
impose upon the defenders of Uxellodunum an exemplary 
penalty. Every one in Gaul knew that Caesar's procon- 
sulate had not many more summers. 

He flew on in advance of his infantry. Promptly he 
decided to break down the defence by thirst. F'irst mis- 
siles and catapults made it impossible for the natives to 
come down any more to the river's brink. Next the great 
perennial spring, which was the last resource of the de- 
fenders, was tapped by mines. Then it was all over for the 
hapless garrison. Csesar gave orders that their hands 
should be cut off, that they should beg their bread among 
the Kelts, to their d3dng day, a living and constant warn- 
ing against freedom. For the first time Caesar in person 
traversed this district. Hostages were readily offered. 
Thence with a detachment of cavalry he visited the 
capital of the old province, Narbo. Soon after he as- 
signed winter quarters for the inclement season 51-50 ; 
laying his hand this time upon the north and upon the 
west central portion of his subjects. Two legions were 
placed among his ^duans. 

After this the proconsul made a flying visit to his old 
Cisalpine communities : their devotion and loyalty ^ had 
been his chief support during the great insurrection which 
now indeed might be considered as brought to termina- 
tion. This visit was more to cheer and reward than for 
the assizes of the ordinary circuit. Soon he was back 
among his Kelts of the northwest and chose for his winter 
quarters Nemetocenna in the north (Arras). 



Turn we now once more to the capital of the Mediter- 
ranean world. When we see how great an accession of 
1 Hirtius, 46. 



CESAR IN 51 B.C. 177 

real power had come to the ancient oligarchy since Pom- 
pey consented to lead them, we feel once more that either 
of the two dynasts, taken by himself, was weightier than 
the senatorial and privileged class. The difference be- 
tween the Optimates and the conqueror of the East was 
chiefly this, that they always wanted to go much faster 
than he, and really, he, and he alone, could set the pace. 
The ultimate aim, indeed, of both was the same : to use 
the summing up of Professor Tyrrell of Dublin^: "to 
secure, that there should be an interval between Caesar's 
surrender of the governorship and his entry on a magis- 
tracy in the city, so that in that interval he might be prose- 
cuted, for no prosecution could be conducted against any 
one in office." Now Csesar, too, was not inactive there, 
although from an early part of 52, down to the autumn of 
51, he was not even south of the Alps. His acts were 
eloquent enough. The sweeping and astounding sum- 
mary ^ of his gifts, bounties, cancellation of private debts, 
taking up of bankrupt young men, lies before us : there 
is never a tinge of rhetoric in Suetonius ; declamation is 
ever absent from his sober pages. — With no smaller indus- 
try at this time was he conciliating kings and provinces. 

But we will not be carried away by the unmistakable 
animus of these bitter chapters in Suetonius, but must 
endeavor, sine ira et studio, if that is possible, to weigh 
and examine the chief acts of parties, partisans, and the 
few momentous personalities appearing in this year. It 
will be easier for those in whose interest I originally wrote 
these lectures, chiefly instructors in American high schools, 
if I maintain to the end an annalistic arrangement. 



Impressive and ever recurrent is Caesar's concern for 
Cisalpine communities. We saw how early in his career 

1 " Correspondence of Cicero," vol. I, p. Ixiii. 

2 In Suet., 27-28: some of this may have been drawn from Tanusius 
Geminus. 



178 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

he became their veritable patronus. It was the latchkey 
to Italy, the door to Rome itself. It seems that Cj^esar 
promised the Roman citizenship to all those Transpadanes 
who possessed that grade of partial franchise known as 
Latinitas. We have just seen with what fervor Hirtius 
spoke of their devotion to Csesar. Out of this well-known 
relation came an incident at the capital. It was the 
junior consul, Marcus Marcellus, who undertook to insult 
Caesar indirectly in a peculiar manner. A member of the 
municipal council of Novum Comum had come to Rome. 
Marcellus had him flogged because he affected the Roman 
citizenship. 1 That this happened in itself pointed to the 
fact that Pompey was no longer Caesar's political associate : 
he was not even neutral any longer. 

The burning question, at least in the concerns and ac- 
tivities of the junior consul, was that of the succession to 
the Gallic provinces. The months of consular presidency 
for him seem to have been February, April, June, August, 
etc. At this time, vague news arrived in Rome of Caesar's 
operations among the Bellovaci, news brought some time 
in May, told even by Domitius, with bated breath, into 
the ears of his friends. There were whisperings of re- 
verses. ^ At the same time, Caelius in Rome writes to 
Cicero in Cilicia, that Marcellus had not yet had the 
senate debate '' de successione provinciarum GalUarum': 
also that Marcellus himself had told he would do so on the 
first of June : also, that this was a postponement. The 
senior consul, the foremost jurist of his day, was a man 
obviously of a very different temperament. Servius Sul- 
picius Rufus, the jurist, was a man of large vision, great 
equipoise, and of a patriotism somewhat rare in that gen- 
eration. He had warned the senate ^ against all hasty 

iPlut., "Cses.," 29. 

2 Cic, "Fam.,"8, 1, 4. 

3 " Fam.," 4, 3, 1. His presidency probably came in January, March, 
May, etc. 



C^SAR IN 51 B.C. 179 

action. He saw clearly the contingency, nay, probability, 
of civil war. In his appeals he surveyed those civil wars 
through which his senatorial hearers themselves had 
passed : the men who, such as Marius, Cinna, Sulla, gained 
autocratic power, had turned out cruel without the justifi- 
cation of any precedent. But whoever, thereafter, would 
gain control of the government by his troops, would prob- 
ably be much more intolerable ; precedent there would 
be, and besides he would add to it, as swayed by his own 
spirit and temperament. 

Cicero, in the spring of this year, had gone to his be- 
lated proconsulate in the distant province of Cilicia, with 
contiguous territories. He held that any settlement 
whatever was better than any form of civil war. Still, 
in one of those months, it seems, when Marcellus presided, 
a S. C. demanding Csesar's retirement from power was 
passed, ^.g., as far as making an official record on the 
minutes of the senate.^ There was, then, a positive ma- 
jority in the division, but a tribune's intercession left the 
Resolution without effect. 

Later in the year Pompey acted as if, at last, he meant 
to go to Spain. On July 23 the senate held a session in 
the temple of Apollo ^ outside of the walls, so that Pompey 
might attend. The question before the house was the 
appropriation of funds for Pompey's army in Spain. 
Keenly there the Optimates watched the lips of Pompey, 
lips generally sealed or non-compromising. They put to 
him a leading question : What was the status of the 
legion which Pompey (early in 53) had loaned to Csesar ? 
He was to be goaded into some utterance. Pompey did 
not like this : ^ he was strongly averse to being pushed by 
any extraneous force ; his favorite mood was reserve ; it 
was not easy to interpret from his outward demeanor what 

1 Madvig, " Verfassung und Verwaltung d. R. St.," 1, p. 322. 

2 Report of Cselius in Rome to Cicero in Cilicia, "Fam.," 8, 4. 

3 Cselius writes : coactus est dicere Pompeius. 



180 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

he meant to do. He was also asked, as though he were 
the head of the government, about the succession to Gains 
Ceesar. For the present Pompey had some affairs to at- 
tend to in connection with some of his forces stationed at 
Ariminum. A formal vote was had, that Pompey should 
return to Rome as soon as possible, " in order that in his 
presence there should be senatorial debate about the suc- 
cession to the provinces." 

We see, plainly, that Pompey alone weighed more than 
the rest of the senate, and that his view of the situation 
was expressed in a formal resolution. The crisis had be- 
gun. In the course of that discussion, Pompey, somewhat 
impulsively, had allowed these words to escape him:^ 
" that every one ought to be subordinate to the senate ! " 
Formally, indeed, an utterance in exact consonance with 
the usages of the Roman government, but actually, at that 
very moment, the Great Council was submitting the chief 
problems of the hour to the personal arbitrament of a man 
who spoke so categorically, so speciously, we may say, as 
though he were the head and front of constitutionalism. 
The matter was adjourned. The elections for 50 B.C. 
followed. The consuls chosen were L. Jj^milius Paulus 
and Gains Claudius Marcellus. Of these the former 2 had 
some private understanding with Csesar, who furnished 
funds for a splendid public structure to bear the ^milian 
name. We may pass over various failures or postpone- 
ments occurring in this anti-Caesarian policy. The action 
of September 29, however, meant something. The con- 
cern as to Csesar's succession fairly paralyzed action on 
every other matter. The chief question always was : 
" What is Pompey's view of things ? " or more plainly : 
" What does Pompey want ? " And the place of meeting 
itself eloquently proclaimed this dependency. The sen- 

1 lb. nam in disputando coniecit illam vocem Cn. Pompeius : ' omnes 
oportere senatui dicto audientes esse. ..." 

2 If we may trust the authority followed by Plut., " Cses.," 29. 



CJESAR IN 51 B.C. 181 

ate was summoned to the temple of Apollo in the Flamin- 
ian meadows outside of the gates, for Pompey, as an 
active proconsul, cum imperio, was excluded from the civil 
community proper, under the ancient laws.^ The S. C, 
then, of Sept. 29, 51 B.C., directed the consuls of the next 
year, on and after March 1, 50 B.C., to have the senate 
debate on the Gallic succession, and that there should be 
no other business whatsoever, the senate to meet even on 
the eomitial days : that even senators on jury duty should 
be excused from it without prejudice or without incurring 
any penalty (sme frauds sua). Further, that if out of 
this S. C. there should result the necessity of having the 
Oomitia (electoral assemblies, whether Centuriata or Tri- 
huta^ vote on a statute dealing with the matter, then the 
magistrates available, according to their rank, should 
present the bill to the electorate. 

Among the senators who officially attested the engross- 
ing of this bill,2 we observe that the first two names were 
those of the most bitter and determined enemies of Csesar, 
viz., Pompey's new father-in-law, Q. Csecilius Metellus 
Pius Scipio (a Metellus by adoption) and L. Domitius 
Ahenobarbus, both afterward prominent in the civil war. 
Again there was an intercession of tribunes : Caesar's sup- 
porters on this occasion were C. Cselius and C. Pansa. 

Pompey let out so much that before March 1 of the 
next year he could not determine about Ciesar's provinces 
'without injury.'' Injury to whom? to the state? to Cse- 
sar ? to Pompey ? " When he was asked ^ : but if any 
one (i.e.., of Csesar's tribunes) should intercede ? " (What 
then ?) Pompey said it made no difference whether Gains 
Caesar would be insubordinate to the senate '•or whether he 

1 Report of Cselius, " Fam.," 8, 8, 4. Aliquando tamen, ssepe re dilata 
et graviter acta eij9?ane perspec^a Cn. Pompei voluntate in earn partem, 
ut eum decedere post Kalendas Manias placeret, senatus consultum quod 
tibi misi factum est et auctoritates perscriptae. 

2 'Qui scribendo adfuerunt.' 

3 So Cselius goes on to report (" Fam.," 8, 8, 9). 



182 ANNALS OF CAESAR 

would provide those (i.e.^ tribunes) who would not suffer the 
senate to pass a resolution.^ "But what, said another, if 
he shall wish both to be a consul and have an army, too ? " 
But Pompey, ' with wondrous gentleness,' ^ said : " What, 
if my son shall wish to bring down his cudgel on me ? "^ 
Clearly to Pompey's mind a contingency which even the 
wildest fancy would exclude, not from the category of prob- 
ability merely, but of possibility. A result unthinkable. 

Now, if Cicero in Cilicia learned every detail here 
recorded from one of the best-informed men in Rome, 
would not the proconsul on the Loire or in Belgium be 
at least as well informed ? Would he fold his hands in 
fatalistic resignation ? 

And the utterance above was taken by the opinion of 
the day, in the capital, as the very first admission by 
Pompey — quotable admission, I mean — that everything 
was not harmonious between himself and the other dynast. 
Long then had he been like a sealed oracle. Now it was 
out. Caesar must not expect to be clothed with the im- 
munity of a new consulate and, at the same time, to hold 
on to provinces and legions until January 1 (48 B.C.), 
when he would be inaugurated once more. As it was, 
there was a kind of truce for five months. To survey in 
detail the success or failure of the minor candidates would 
not be very profitable here. But one feature arrests our 
attention. The tribunes for 50 B.C., almost to a man, 
were Csesarians. We must assume that Caesar's influence 
and money were a great factor on the Field of Mars. -The 
influence, so called, of politicians generally consists in 
lively prospects of pelf or jobs. Some of the tribunes 
chosen were specifically sent from the field in Gaul to 
get this oflice. 

1 Cselius speaks with bitter irony. 

2 Fustem mihi impingere volet. . . . Tyrrell's version (' raise his 
cudgel against me') is far too mild. Kather: "bring it dovs'n upon me 
vdth a whack." 



CiESAR IN 51 B.C. 183 

One, indeed, of these tribunes " of the people " who took 
office on Dec. 10, 51, was bitterly hostile to Csesar.^ By 
parts and inherited ability he was by far the most eminent 
of the new tribunes. This was Gains Scribonius Curio, 
of whom Velleius (2, 48) gives this delineation : " a man 
high-born, a fine orator, audacious, a man who was a 
squanderer both of his own and other people's fortune 
and sexual honor, a man who was a veritable genius in 
his ways of viciousness (ingeniosissime nequam)^ a fluent 
speaker for the people's evil, whose mood neither any 
wealth nor appetites could satisfy." As if private de- 
moralization could be coupled with a high-principled pub- 
lic career. Man is one in his being, and leads not really 
two lives. For the 'Good and the Senate ' expected much 
from this champion. Clever and forceful epigrams fell 
from his lips,^ grace and fluency arrested the attention 
of his hearers when he harangued them from the rostra. 
His wife was Clodius' widow, the passionate and domi- 
neering Fulvia. Curio was her second husband ; after- 
ward she took Antony : the herculean and heroic in battle, 
non-heroic only when the eternally feminine dazzled his 
vision, which was chronically the case. Curio had long 
made interest for the tribunate, and we may presume that 
he scented the oncoming of a political crisis such as this 
generation had not seen before, a crisis sure to produce 
a situation in which he could sell himself at a rare price. 
He calculated correctly. — While all these things were 
going forward, Caesar's interests at Rome were guarded 
mainly by Cornelius Balbus.^ The adroit and diplomatic 

1 Not, however, from any deep convictions. Csesar had, through his 
agents or otherwise, treated him with contempt during the canvass. 
" Fam.," 8, 4, 1 : "ut spero et volo et ut se fert ipsi, bonos et senatum 
malet. Totus, ut nunc est, hoc scaturit. Huius autem voluntatis initium 
et causa est quod eum non mediocriter Ccesar qui solet iiijimoi'um homU 
num amicitiam sibi qualibet impensa adiungere, valde contempsit.''^ lb., 
"Fam.," 8, 4, 1. 

2 Cic, " Brutus," 280. s u ^am.," 8, 9, 5. 



184 ANNALS OF CAESAR 

Spaniard (naturalized as Roman citizen through Pompey), 
ever watchful, ever faithful, openly protested, even in sen- 
ate, against the procedures of Csesar's enemies, such as 
Metellus Scipio. The despatches of Balbus must have 
furnished the most engrossing reading to Csesar in Bel- 
gium or elsewhere in that autumn. 



CHAPTER XVI 

C^SAR IN 50 B.C. 

It was to be the proconsul's last summer among the 
Kelts. All that Hirtius has to report of military opera- 
tions, or other proconsular acts of that year, are given in 
the last six chapters of his relation. Still these are full 
of historical import. Csesar wished to do those things 
which, indeed, in a fair way would leave Gaul a settled 
province, and some resource amid the lowering heavens 
of the political future. Statesman as he was coming to 
be, he aimed at the sentiment and conviction of those 
whom he ruled. He would do nothing to anger them, 
would equally have nothing done which might hold out 
any hope of independence. His edicts were couched in 
kindly form ; with generous courtesy did he treat leading 
men. No new burdens were imposed. Early in 50 B.C., 
he crossed the Alps and visited the communities of the 
Po-country, to make interest for Antony's augurate. 
Caesar himself even then canvassed for the consulate. 
The Adversarii of Hirtius' relation, whom Csesar coun- 
teracted in this electioneering, were in Rome. In the 
Transpadane Caesar was feted in every way : garlands, 
sacrifices, banquets, city gates decorated ; everywhere 
acclaim for the conquering hero. 

The rest of Hirtius' account merges completely into a 
partisan account of the larger movements in Rome, and 
so we will lay Hirtius aside here. 

Csesar intended making Labienus his vicegerent in the 
Cisalpine. Why does Hirtius emphasize this ? Obviously 
to bring out the trust which Caesar placed in the most 
competent of his subcommanders, and that at the very 

185 



186 ANNALS OF CESAR 

time when the Optimates were winning him away. Or 
shall we say, the Pompeians ? A transaction inspired by 
the prospect of a great war. 

As to the senate, Caesar's partisans at Rome, of whom 
many operated behind the scenes, prevented any radical 
action in the spring. Curio himself kept his hand on 
the lever of the parliamentary machine, without as yet 
coming out openly as a Caesarian. Cicero was still in his 
province of Cilicia. 

In a session of the senate, not fully attended, in April 
("Fam.," 8, 11), there was a passage at arms between 
Ccesar's chief representative in the senate, the ever watch- 
ful Balbus, and Curio. The former openly upbraided the 
tribune, that if he were to act in such and such a manner, 
he would pursue a course injurious to Csesar. 

At this time, Pompey himself, weary of Curio's skir- 
mishing against him, had retired to the Roman Newport, 
the gulf of Baiae. It was understood at this time that 
Pompey, ' with the senate,' had firmly resolved on having 
Caesar recalled on Nov. 13, 49 B.C., so that the latter 
would be a private person at least for forty-eight days. 
' Curio has determined to undergo everything rather than 
suffer that.'^ If we read further in that letter, we find 
this luminous passage : " The makeup of the entire politi- 
cal stage is as follows : Pompey, as though he were not 
making his set against Caesar, but were determining that 
which he deemed fair to the latter, says that Curio is 
seeking dissension. As a matter of fact, he (Pompey) 
does not wish, and positively fears that Caesar be made 
consul elect, before surrendering army and province. He 
is pretty roughly handled by Curio, and his entire second 
consulate (^56 B.C.) is sharply criticized. As a matter of 
fact. Curio in the debates of this summer played a very 
important role : as trihunus plebis he allowed no anti- 

1 Caelius to Cicero, " Fam.," 8, 11, 3. 



CiESAR IN 50 B.C. 187 

Csesarian resolution to pass in the senate, demanding 
that any resolution for Caesar's recall should be amended 
by the addition that Pompey likewise should give up 
provinces and legions." The rejoinder of the Pompeians^ 
was that Pompey's second quinquenniujn had not run out 
yet in the same measure as that of Csesar. It was a fair- 
seeming motion, this of Curio's; they threw flowers at 
him on the forum for it.^ Caesar had guaranteed the 
payment of Curio's private debts, more than a million of 
our money, but this was not known to the political world 
at the time. Pompey wrote a diplomatic note from 
Naples, but nothing was done to remove the cause of the 
ever- widening Assure in public affairs. In June there 
was a vote ; Pompey had returned. The first motion was 
that Caesar should abandon province and army. , The 
second was that both should simultaneously retire to pri- 
vate life.^ This was the motion on which Curio particu- 
larly insisted. Impressive was the actual division, when 
three hundred and seventy senators voted for it, against 
it but twenty-two. 

About the middle of June, Caesar was requested (as 
was Pompey) to give up 07ie legion for the war against 
the Parthians. Pompey had engineered this motion, and 
he now further requested that Caesar return the legion 
which Pompey had loaned him early in 53 B.C. Pompey's 
design was obvious, but Caesar, without flinching, gave 
up these legions, having given to each man in the Pom- 
peian legion a bounty of one thousand sesterces. For the 
present, however, the troops were not at all sent to the 
East, but detained at Capua. 

In the consular elections for 49, held in July, 50, the 

1 App., "B.C.," 2, 27. 

2 Plut. " Caes.," 30, and App., ib. 

3 Plut., "Pomp.," 58. Liv. in 109 seems to have presented the ora- 
tions of Curio in his dramatic and rhetorical manner. Cf . App., " B. C," 
2,30. 



188 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

candidate favored by Csesar, viz., Servius Galba,^ was 
defeated on the Field of Mars. The successful candi- 
dates were both, it seems, Optimates, or Pompeians; at 
all events, they were reputed to be, and indeed were, 
violent anti-Ceesarians. One was Gains Claudius Marcel- 
lus, brother of the consul of 51, and cousin of the Marcellus 
of 50. Everywhere a note of triumph was sounded, for 
now at last two consuls had been chosen, both hostile to 
the proconsul of Gaul, for the other, L. Cornelius Lentulus, 
while staggering under enormous debts, was not venal, as 
time proved. There was, indeed, a rumor current in the 
city during the autumn, that Lentulus was in Caesar's inter- 
est. (" Att.," 6, 8, 2.) The feeling as to what Csesar might 
do was decidedly uncomfortable at the capital. — Pompey, 
whose strong point had been actual campaigning and true 
touch with the temper and fitness of the rank and file, was 
badly deceived by some of the officers who had been sent 
to bring the two legions over the Alps to Capua. These 
officers told Pompey that these troops were worn out and 
weary, both of the hardships and their long service. 

September and October Ceesar spent in the Transalpine, 
making his last dispositions of winter quarters and of the 
quota of taxation of the several commonwealths. 

In the parliamentary skirmishes in the city, Ceesar's 
man. Curio, on the whole had come off better than the con- 
sul, Marcellus. The latter's proposal was that to Pompey 
be assigned the protection of the capital and command 
of the forces with no limitation of further conscription ; 
virtually, a declaration of war by a single chief magis- 
trate, an act unconstitutional and void ; but these checks 
are apt to disappear when great crises press for solution. 
Curio did his best, by eloquent and powerful allocutions 
on the forum, to make odious to the common people the 
measures of Caesar's enemies. But he could not stop the 
conscription actually begun by Pompey. 
1 "B, G.," 8, 50. 



CiESAR IN 50 B.C. 189 

As to the latter, victorious on land and sea, triumphant 
from three continents, wonderful mobilizer and organizer 
of the past, he was losing, or had actually lost, that quality- 
essential for success, the keen faculty of seizing what was 
actual and real in a given situation. As Cicero landed in 
Brundisium ("Att.," 7, 1), he saw the situation clearly 
enough — even he ; more so than Pompey himself : the 
man of letters wrote to his bosom friend not long before 
the storm : " About their private power men contest at 
this time, at the risk of the commonwealth." This was 
in December, 50 (of uncorrected calendar, really much 
earlier b}^ solar year : " Att.," 7, 3, 4). 



CHAPTER XVII 

C^SAR IN 49 B.C. 

On Dec. 10, 50 B.C., Curio's tribunician year expired, 
and he went north to report to his employer at Ravenna. 
Before departing he had, on the last days of his office, 
delivered harangues on the forum, endeavoring, with such 
talent as he undoubtedly possessed, to inflame the popu- 
lace against Pompey and the consuls. 

On Jan. 1, 49 (=Nov. 13, 50, of solar year). Curio 
delivered in the senate a letter from Csesar. The session 
was on the Capitol, therefore Pompey was not personally 
present, but his father-in-law, Metellus Scipio, was looked 
upon as his spokesman. Clearly this was Ci3esar's ultima- 
tum. In three days Curio had brought it down from 
Ravenna. (" App." 2, 32.) Csesar recounted his achieve- 
ments from the beginning, and then offered to lay down 
his power simultaneously with Pompey. If the latter 
held on, then the writer would with force and speedily 
safeguard the interests of the capital as well as his own. 
The new consuls were compelled by two of the new trib- 
unes, Antony and Cassius, to have this missive read in 
session. 

As Dio with his inferential pragmatism reports (41, 1), 
the ultimatum ended with the statement : " in order that 
he might not be surrendered to his personal enemies." 
Even before these Kalends, Hirtius had quietly and sud- 
denly come to Rome from Csesar, without calling on 
Pompey: after a very short stay and conference with 
Balbus, he had returned to the north. 

In that death scene of the Roman Republic on the 
Kalends of January, the consuls declined to have the sen- 

190 



CiESAR IN 49 B.C. 191 

ate debate on Caesar's letter. They laid before the Great 
Council the state of the country^ as was the custom. 

[Cicero's letters in the crisis have an historical importance somewhat 
greater than official utterances of the two principals. For to Atticus he 
discloses with entire candor how things impress him. " We need peace. 
Out of a victory both many (other) evils and an autocrat will arise." 
("Att.," 7, 5, 3.) "I have as yet hardly come across any one who 
did not think we ought to grant to Caesar what he demands rather than 
have a desperate conflict." "That demand of his, indeed, is more forceful 
than notions (of others)." Cicero refers to the extension by a second 
quinquennium (which he himself had furthered in 56 b.c.) ; refers also 
to the plebiscite which permitted Csesar to be a candidate in his absence 
..." unless perhaps we gave him these arms at that time, in order that 
we now might fight a well prepared man." ("Att.," 7, 6, 2.) — Elsewhere: 
"As to my honor (the Cilician triumph), unless Caesar has plotted some- 
thing through his own tribunes'''' (per suos tribunos) : his own, indeed; 
and there were ever so many other persons whom he oioned, even though 
less publicly and notoriously.] 

But, to return : the only motion of January 1, on 
which a motion was actually permitted by the consul 
Lentulus, was that of Pompey's father-in-law, Metellus 
Scipio. Apart from any distant clanking of the sword, 
Caesar's ground seemed fair. It was his maxim to occupy 
such always, as far as possible, on the forum of public 
opinion, and in the art of putting his adversaries in the 
wrong he was an adept. 

The vote adopted was that Csesar must evacuate his 
provinces before a certain date : otherwise he would be 
held a public enemy. Probably July 1 was the date 
signified.! Xwo senators only. Curio and Cselius, voted 
against this motion ; but intercession invalidated the 
Senatus Consultum. 

Meanwhile, after adjournment, Pompey, in his park, 
holds conferences. January 2 the business before the 
house is the Intercession. Of course Caesar's own trib- 
unes cannot yield. Resolution for garb of public mourn- 
ing : Resolution blocked by same pair of tribunes ; 

1 Lange, 3, 406. 



192 ANNALS OF CAESAR 

but garb is donned in spite of that. January 3-4, no 
senate. Sessions resumed January 5, 6, 7. Caesar's 
father-in-law, Calpurnius Piso, offers to go to Ravenna 
for conciliation. Deadlock continues until the last of 
these seven days. On January 7 (= Nov. 19, solar year 
50) the S. C. ultimum is passed against Csesar's own 
recalcitrant tribunes : martial law. But martial law at 
that time in Rome could not mean anything but Pompey 
for generalissimo, no matter what the phrase or formula. 
The two tribunes now flee to him who, at Ravenna, was 
awaiting reply to his '' gentle demands." The Roman 
feeling made much of it, that Antony and Cassius escaped 
by night in disguise of humble garb, on hired convey- 
ance. We remain somewhat cooler on being confronted 
with this outrage. 

These, and the further acts of the home government, 
Caesar in his own book on the Civil War (1, 6-7) pre- 
sents, as far as possible, as irregular. At this time, 
Pompey still nursed the precious notion that Caesar's 
legions were estranged from him. But at Ravenna,^ 
Caesar learned all, probably not later than January 10 
(= Nov. 22, 50 B.C.), and promptly harangued the one 
legion which he had there. Pompey's estrangement from 
himself he presented as partly due to the machinations of 
his own private enemies, and partly to Pompey's own 
envy and jealousy ,2 in which, said the proconsul of Gaul, 
he but ill requited Caesar's generous attitude towards 
himself. This address to the troops was held on Jan- 
uary 13 (= November 25). A goodly part of it was 
political, as, that the declaration of martial law at Rome 
was not justified by any fair precedent, but there was also 
a powerful appeal to their military pride. They it was 

1 The tribunes, indeed, did not go further than Ariminum. Probably 
that was the understanding. 

2 It is, psychologically, wildly improbable that Csesar composed, e.g., 
the introductory words of "B. G.," 7, 1, after this time. 



CiESAR IN 49 B.C. 193 

who had subdued all Gaul and Germany — this might 
pass in the emotional energy of such an appeal : — would 
they not now defend their commander and maintain, for 
him, his honor and reputation against his foes ? Indeed, 
as the sequel showed, they were his troops. The state 
had furnished the stipend from the aerarium of the mori- 
bund Republic, but really they were his own^ his own with 
an attachment far surpassing that of mere civic political 
adherents. Even his adopted son, some five years and 
eight months later, with splendid success, could appeal 
to these sentiments of military loyalty and personal affec- 
tion, in taking the first steps to establish himself as a 
great power at once, though but nineteen years of age at 
the time. The Republic, even the fictitious Republic of 
a corrupt oligarchy, was indeed in extremis. Representa- 
tive government, in our stricter sense of the word, had 
long ceased to be, long ceased to abide even as an empty 
shell. There had been two dynasts, long balancing and 
attitudinizing, but now proceeding to the arbitrament of 
force. But let us be fair. 

If Csesar, by a supreme effort of civic virtue, had re- 
signed everything and retired to a leisure of study and 
reflection like that of Rutilius Rufus at Smyrna, would 
the Oligarchy have permitted him to live out his life 
without annoyance or danger? Again, it is psychologi- 
cally and morally absurd, not to see^ that Csesar, from 
early youth up, was swayed by a rare combination of 
abysmal ambition, coupled with a preternatural sense of 
actuality, and a faculty of action not predetermined for 
his mind by the hard and fast lines in which the world 
lies before the outlook of the mere doctrinaire, but led in 
every new emergency by an extraordinary grasp of cir- 
cumstances. Many a situation, too, was actually made, 
shaped, evoked by his keen intelligence which understood 

1 As Froude did not see, or try to see. 



194 ANNALS OF CAESAR 

and discounted the mental processes of his fellows and 
contemporaries, and actually predetermined the future 
itself. 

Csesar was convinced that he would be put upon his 
trial if he ever became a private citizen once more- In 
striding among the dead, immediately after his victory at 
Pharsalos, he spoke to himself in Greek (Asinius Pollio 
caught the words) : " This was their will, to this pitch of 
necessity they brought me, that I, Gains Csesar, the man 
who has successfully waged the greatest wars, if I had 
dismissed my armies^ ivould have been found guilty on trial,"" 
(Pint. " Cses.," 46.) Pompey, indeed, had a different 
interpretation of Caesar's motives for beginning the civil 
war. "Inasmuch," he was wont to say,^ "as he was 
neither able to complete the works which he had begun, 
nor satisfy the expectations of the people which it had 
formed of his arrival, ^ satisfy it by his private resources, 
therefore he willed to cause an uproar and throw every- 
thing out of gear." 

^^tfesar sent in advance officers (Plut. "Cses.," 32), 
without any military display, quickly to seize the town of 
Ariminum, thus beginning the civil war, even before he 
himself crossed the bridge over the little Rubicon^ This 
he accomplished after nightfall, with deliberate privacy, 
attended only by a small number of men deep in his con- 
fidence. Even the dinner company which he had left 
were not informed of his immediate action. He had 
driven fast,^ but when he came to the rivulet he halted ; 
no reason to doubt in the least what seems to have been 

1 ' Dictitabat,' Suet. " Cses.," 30. 

2 Pompey probably means the triumph. 

3 The close resemblance of Plutarch, " Cses.," 32, and Appian, "B. C," 
2, 35, may point to Livy : the ultimate source of all, however, I believe 
to be Asinius Pollio, an eyewitness, nay, an earwitness. See my paper 
in the Proceedings of the American Philological Association for 1901. 
The text in Suet. , 32, should be changed to ' lacta esto (for est) alea ' — 
The Greek line : dedoyfi^vov t6 wpayfi, aveppL(f>6o} k{>^os ! 



C^SAR IN 49 B.C. 195 

remembered and recorded by Asinius Pollio : the phrase 
that rose to his lips, too, from Menander's " Arrephoros," 
a commonplace of that culture, ending in the words 

* Let the die be cast ! ' 

escaped him, not pompously nor histrionically, but that 
agony of the soul, that endless weighing and computing, 
was now at an end. Resolution unfetters the soul. Since 
the death of Clodius by the wineshop on the Appian Way, 
and when the visible headship of the Oligarchy, in the 
person of his fellow-dynast, had become an accomplished 
fact, — for three years the struggle within his soul had 
gone on, and risen to ever greater intensity. This critical 
act occurred on January 12 or 13 (November 24 or 25). 
At dawn of day Caesar arrived at Ariminum. Great as 
was his characteristic and far-famed speed, he was not 
reckless, for he keenly dealt with the feasible, and with 
the spirit and mood of his adversaries. The partisans on 
both sides naturally spun the thread of sentiment or an- 
ticipation, largely and naturally enthralled by the prece- 
dents of Marius, Cinna, and Sulla. Life and all its boons, 
or Death ; ignoble butchery, destitution, exile, or wealth, 
triumph and power, the satisfying of long and bitter ran- 
cor ; revenge, and the settlement of ancient scores, all 
this, for thousands, lay or seemed to lie, in the scales of 
Fortune. The deeper and truer Caesar neither party 
could as yet know. He had not yet been revealed, per- 
haps not even to himself. 

The measures of Pompey and the Pompeians now began 
to be determined, not by him or them, but by Caesar and 
by their apprehension of Caesar. The latter, at first, had 
about him but the Xlllth Legion. Pompey was perturbed 
and confused : many of his followers were angry at him. 
" Now stamp your legions from the soil of Italy ! " so 
taunted Favonius, whom they called the ape of Cato. 
That Stoic would make great concessions to Caesar rather 



196 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

than begin civil war.i Most Pompeians refused to believe 
in the good faith of Csesar's demands. Pompey now ad- 
mitted that Cato's warnings and predictions had been well 
founded. At Rome there was panic : people moved away 
and escaped to the south : at the same time others, aban- 
doning the country towns, poured into Rome. It was the 
inclement season. Pompey, himself, to whom all looked 
for counsel and guidance, was buffeted by conflicting 
counsels, warnings, petitions, urgings. News from the 
north varied rapidly, and the most sensational was most 
readily believed. The only definite thing in the capital 
was a universal panic. On January 17, at dusk (Novem- 
ber 29), the Only One left Rome, never to see it again. 
The next day the consuls followed, all in supreme haste ; 
even the public funds were forgotten. 

Mutual offers and counter offers between the principals 
we may pass over : they were probably not seriously meant 
on either side. Immediately after the meeting of Caesar 
with his own tribunes^ he had sent orders to Gaul to have 
his legions march into Italy. Legion XII joined him first. 
Soon Picenum was in his possession. To Cicero, Pom- 
pey appeared as one dazed. Labienus had joined Pompey. 
The flight of Pompey touched the emotions of men. On 
January 22 (December 4) they discussed the alternative 
of making a stand in Apulia, or crossing the Adriatic. 
They were apprehensive of the levies now made. 

Caesar readily saw that armed forces would not often 
be required to hold for him the northern towns. In Cam- 
pania ("Att.," 7, 14, 2) the settlers who had been living 
there for ten years, under Caesar's land-laws, were no 
reliable material for Pompey's conscription. 

The first notable resistance Caesar found in central 
Italy, at Corfinium^ on the Aternus. In that town com- 
manded Caesar's bitter foe, Domitius. At the same time 

1 "Att.," 7, 15,2. 



CiESAR IN 49 B.C. 197 

Sulmo opened its gates to Mark Antony. Here Ceesar 
began his policy of kindliness and forbearance. Attius, a 
Pompeian local leader, departed freely. While encamped 
before Corfinium, Csesar received reinforcements from the 
north, including his Legion VIII. Pompey was unwilling 
to relieve the town, and the garrison soon of itself took 
the military oath to serve under Caesar's eagles. Domi- 
tius was allowed to go, and even to take along funds which 
he had from Pompey. (Cj^s., " B. C," 1, 23.) This im- 
portant surrender took place about February 19 (January 
1-2, 49 B.C.). During these winter days, Cicero, himself 
(" Fam.," 14, 14, 10), was not sure whether Caesar would 
sack the capital or not. Labienus had filled Pompey's 
ears with absurd stories about the weakness of Caesar's 
troops. (" Att.," 7, 16, 2.) Early in February, in a letter 
to his bosom friend ("Att.," 7, 20), the Arpinate referred 
to Caesar as to a tyrant, of whom one could not yet know 
whether he would turn out a Phalaris or a Pisistratus, 
cruel or moderate. The conscription in the south gener- 
ally had been a fizzle or a failure ("Att.," 7, 21, 1); 
Pompey utterly without spirit or energy .^ Atticus at 
Rome, early in February, expected bloodshed by new pro- 
scriptions when Caesar should come.^ On February 9, 
Cicero, in his survey of things, had abandoned Italy to 
Caesar. Good news left Cicero incredulous or pessimistic. 
On February 24 Cicero heard of the surrender of Cor- 
finium. His emotional disgust turned against Pompey. 
On February 25 the latter was in the port of Brundisium. 
On March 9 Caesar arrived before it with six legions. 
He tried to block Pompey's departure, and still repeatedly 
sought conferences. ("B.C.," 1, 26.) Pompey declined 
because the consuls were not on hand. At last^ Caesar 
(if we are to believe him) ceased to hope for conciliation. 

^ lb., ' totus iacet.' 

2 ' Tu csedem non sine causa times.' " Att.," 7, 22. 

3 lb., 'aliquando.' 



198 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

On March 17 Pompey left the soil of Italy forever. 
' Ever shameful and disastrous flight ' ... so Cicero felt 
about Pompey 's strategy of retreat. ^ But the conqueror 
of the East looked forward to facing Csesar later on, with 
many provinces and kingdoms at his back, and with a sit- 
uation vastly improved through command of the sea. 



Now began that demeanor of Csesar, in which there was 
a curious medley of autocratic and constitutional measures, 
the former often necessary, the latter often factitious, and, 
in a measure, sentimental. Sardinia and Sicily were occu- 
pied by his appointees with remarkable ease. The sena- 
torial government, its insolence, oppression, and rapacity, 
had de^^rived the representatives of that government of 
all hold on the provincials, even when men like Cato 
represented that government at this moment. 

^ C8esar turned from Apulia to Rome, which he had not 
seen for nine years. Here, in his public allocutions, he 
represented his course as strictly legitimate. Pompey 
himself ^ had allowed the plebiscite to be enacted, which 
permitted his candidacy while in his province. No ambi- 
tion had spurred him on : what he experienced had been 
unfairness, refusal of conferences for conciliation. Caesar 
now requested senators to remain at home and do their 
full share in the current work of the government : whoso- 
ever, on the other hand, would abandon Rome, should find 
Csesar ready to govern by himself. "With you, conscript 
fathers, if I may : without you, if I must ! " He still was 
willing to send envoys for pacification. 

Political play this, I believe, clever play against Pompey 
in this comity of granting freedom of movement to sena- 
tors : the older dynast had declared that as Csesarians 
would be held all who would remain at Rome. 

i"Att.,"8, 1,3. 
2 In 52. 



CiESAR IN 49 B.C. 199 

The special reserve fund of the state (in the aerarium 
sanctius) Caesar appropriated, dealing without ceremony 
with the one last tribune who protested. He had, truly, 
gained the peninsula without bloodshed. ^ He had, so 
far, laid no heavy hand on life or proj)erty. No new 
Sulla had arisen, no new Marius had come forward estab- 
lishing a reign of terror. And still there was no enthu- 
siasm, and the remnants of the Great Council were sullen. 
Caesar himself designated the time spent in Rome as 
virtually lost time. (" B. C," 1, 33, 4.) Pompey's west- 
ern imperium must first be broken down : to the keen 
man of action, with such tasks before him, parliamentary 
palavering was, indeed, a waste of precious days. 

Dio (41, 16 ; Livy ?) tells us also (Caesar does not) that 
to the plebs Caesar promised a present equal to about eight 
dollars per man. The grain distribution, also, seems to 
have fallen into neglect after the departure of the regular 
government from Rome. The envoys to Pompey were 
never sent. The populace saw the troops in town,^ and 
felt somewhat incredulous as to Caesar's smooth words. 

In beginning his war in the west, to wrest Spain from 
the other dynast, Caesar was greatly incommoded by the 
defection of Massilia. When he told the rulers of that 
Greek emporium (" B. C," 1, 35) that they should follow 
" the lead of all Italy rather than obey the will of a single 
person," he spoke simply as a politician : the argument 
might easily have been reversed. Domitius, let go at 
Corfinium, directed the defence of that port. 

Caesar in person undertook the Iberian campaign. The 
field of operations was on the river Sicoris (Segre), which 
flows into the lower Ebro from the northeast, the chief 
town of that district being Her da (Lerida). 

1 Dio, 41, 8. 

2 " From Gaul and Germany he worked the war around upon the capi- 
tal, and that coddler of the plebs, that people's man, placed his camp in 
the Circus Flaminius, nearer than had been that of Porsena." Seneca, 
" De Benef.," V, 16, 5. 



200 ANNALS OF CAESAR 

Among his own troops Csesar had five thousand Gallic 
cavalry, and during the campaign he drew further on that 
province. For awhile, he suffered much from high water 
and from lack of grain supplies. At Rome, for a time 
("B. C," 1, 53), it was believed that he was losing the 
campaign. But on the spot, his swift operations overcame 
the disadvantages of topography, and soon many commu- 
nities of northeastern Spain, convinced that he would win 
in the end, supplied his needs. The defection from Pom- 
pey spread. His engineers began to divert the river. 
Afranius and Petreius, the Pompeian commanders, were 
compelled to abandon their base at Ilerda, and march in 
an almost southerly direction toward the Ebro. Csesar, 
crossing the Sicoris, overtook them in the afternoon. Both 
sides encamped. Then Csesar manoeuvred in such a way 
that, if the Pompeian s were to reach the Ebro before him, 
they would have to abandon camp and baggage (1, 70). 
Finally, Coesar held Afranius in a position where he could 
overcome him by thirst (c. 72). Csesar himself strongly 
emphasizes his humane and generous motives, refusing to 
give battle, and maintaining this even against the ardor 
and impatience, nay petulance, of his own veterans. " He 
was moved by pity for citizens who, he saw, must needs 
be slain." He wished to be remembered as kind-hearted. 
The greater appears the contrast with Petreius. For the 
end was at hand, and Csesar's kindliness was even then 
rapidly conciliating the goodwill of the Pompeian rank 
and file. Petreius, indeed, remained faithful to his dis- 
tant proconsul, forcing his colleague and his troops to 
renew their military oath. Desertions to Caesar were of 
daily occurrence. So the Pompeian leaders determined 
to march back on Ilerda. Caesar hung on their heels. 
Covering little ground and incessantly harassed, they 
finally halted and built a stockade where there was no 
w^ater. Nor could they procure fodder. At this point 
Caesar began to surround them with a circumvallation. 



CiESAR IN 49 B.C. 201 

On the fourth day the Pompeians asked for a conference. 
There Afranius offered surrender. Caesar soundly hum- 
bled their pride. Why had they been so obstinate before, 
when their own troops were ready to abandon the hopeless 
contest ? Csesar here brushed aside all military considera- 
tions and laid stress (1, 85) on the political : the forces in 
Spain had been maintained, not, indeed, for the control of 
those provinces, but against himself. A novel kind of 
proconsulate was this, that Pompey at the gates of Rome, 
should control the administration, ^ and at the same time 
while absent, hold for so many years two warlike provinces. 
He, Caesar, had been the real object of this extraordinary 
and irregular manipulation. Now they must disband 
their legions and leave the province. None would be 
compelled to serve under himself against his will. 

Hispania ulterior had been under Varro (then sixty- 
seven years of age), the tried friend of Pompey, and 
known to us as the greatest expert of Roman antiqui- 
ties. Csesar ("B. C," 2, 17 sqq.), in a sub-ironical way, 
delineates the elderly author as somewhat of a watcher of 
the winds, an observer who depended on what news came 
to hand, a brave disseminator of bad news if they bore 
against Caesar. 

The latter, after the capitulation in northeastern Spain, 
hastened to the south, having summoned the leading men 
to Corduba. Gades (the community of Balbus) refused 
obedience to Varro (2, 20), who finally submitted to Cae- 
sar at Corduba, and turned over to him the public funds. 

Caesar sailed from Gades to Tarraco, thence travelled 
by land to Narbo and Massilia, which then made its for- 
mal submission. Domitius had fled a few days before. 
Here Caesar heard — probably without much surprise — 
that he had been named dictator by the praetor Lepidus. 
The consuls were in Macedon. This happened in the 
latter part of August or early in September. 
1 Prsesideat rebus. 



202 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

Somewhat later, Csesar's partisan, the orator and politi- 
cian Curio, lost Africa for his principal, and perished him- 
self. Africa, with Sicily, was an economic necessity for 
feeding the proletariat of the capital. The Numidian 
king Juba had a large share in this Pompeian success. 
Ceesar ("B. C," 2, 38) speaks with gentle moderation of 
the catastrophe of Curio ; he explains it psychologically. 
Of the death of Curio personally, he speaks with respect, 
almost with emotion. 

Political rewards there had been : much of the coming 
monarch's administration consisted of such rewards dealt 
out to partisans. This assignment of Africa had been a 
failure. The appointment of Q. Cassius Longinus, as 
governor of Farther Spain, was likewise a grossly faulty 
one. But he, with Antony, had done material service 
early in the year at Rome. Csesar was dictator then : let 
us survey his power as it was in that autumn : Spain, 
Gaul, Cisalpine, Italy, Sicily, Sardinia. His dictatorship,^ 
expressedly, was for conducting the elections in default 
of consuls, and lasted but eleven days. 

At last, then, Caesar got his second consulate. Was it 
this little civic honor that he had gained vast power for 
in northwestern Europe ? Hardly. But he adds, as 
though he were a veritable Cato : " For this was the 
year in which, under the statutes? he could be made con- 
sul." Per leges indeed. Rome and forum were weighty 
spheres to bestow the glamor of legality on any new 
magistrates : at Thessalonica, of course, they were not 
recognized. 

At this time Caesar refused to send any envoys to Pom- 
pey, for he, Caesar, had now the prestige of regularity, 
and controlled the capital. Both dynasts used the old 
forms as long as they could. 

During Caesar's absence in Spain, Mark Antony was 

1 Appian, 2, 48 ; Plut., " Cses.," 37. 

2 ' Per leges,' scil. the Lex Villia Annalis. 



CiESAR IN 49 B.C. 203 

his viceroy in Italy, and ^ in meeting municipal dignitaries 
demeaned himself with sovereign whimsicality if not with 
brutal self-indulgence. Some of the purest patriots of 
the peninsula, like Servius Sulpicius, dreaded the victory 
of either dynast ("Att.," 10, 14). Either, he was con- 
vinced, would in time be driven to resort to confiscation 
on a large scale. 

For delicate and private activities Csesar had again re- 
lied on Balbus. 



[In Cicero's eyes and in his emotional susceptibility the events of this 
critical year, mirrored in his letters to Atticus, hooks 7, 8, 9, 10, appear 
to us as endowed with much more life and color than in Caesar's partisan 
however politic relation. Things often look essentially different in his 
relation : In January he writes to Tiro ^ about Caesar's ultimatum ; he 
calls Caesar impudent for holding army and province against the will of 
the senate. Curio goads him on. Antony and Cassius have gone to 
Caesar, driven by no force. 

Jan. 25. " We are disgracefully unprepared, on the score of soldiers 
as well as treasure." (" Att.," 7, 14.) 

Jan. 27. " We thought that he, if he moved close to the city, would 
fear to lose the provinces of Gaul, both of which are bitterly hostile to 
him, excepting the Transpadanes." We observe the talk of Labienus, 
probably. ("Fam.," 16, 12.) This sinister influence of Labienus on 
Pompey is confirmed by "Att,," 7, 16, 2: (Pompey) "has Labienus 
with him, who entertains no doubt as to the weakness of Caesar's troops." 

Feb. 15. ("Att.," 8, 11.) " When we were all apprehensive of Cae- 
sar, Pompey himself treated him with distinction : after he himself has 
begun to fear Caesar, he thinks all should be the latter' s foes." 

Feb. 18-19. ("Att.," 8, 3, 3.) "I pass over those ancient things, 
that he (Pompey) nourished, advanced, armed Caesar in public affairs, 
he (in 59 b.c), as supporter for laws passed by force and against the 
auspices, he, the one who added Farther Gaul, he, son-in-law, he, augur 
in the adoption of P. Clodius, he, the extender of time for the province, 
he, the helper of the absent one in all things, the same also in his third 
consulate, after he began to be the defender of the state, exerted himself 
that the ten tribunes should propose a law that he might be a candidate 
in his absence, which he likewise legalized by a certain statute of his own, 
and resisted Marcus Marcellus, when the latter was engaged in an effort to 
limit (the holding of) the Gallic provinces on March first." . . . 

1 "Att.," 10, 13. 

2 "Fam.," 16, 11. 



204 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

In the latter part of February Caesar endeavored to draw one of the 
consuls, Lentulus, back to Rome by promising him a province. (" Att.," 
8, 9, 4.) 

Cicero at first distrusted Caesar's conciliatory letters and pronounce- 
ments. Some of the latter w^ere certainly more politic than sincere, as 
when he told Cicero, through Balbus, that his choice was simply to live 
without apprehension, with Pompey the first man in the state. 'I sup- 
pose you believe that,' my dear Atticus. Certainly I do not. — Nor do 
we. 

Returning from Brundisium, in the last days of March, CsBsar had a 
personal conference with Cicero. ("Att.," 9, 18.) The orator found 
Caesar positive and unyielding. Their views of the situation were irrecon- 
cfiable. Cicero stood for the maintenance of parliamentary forces, for the 
decisive importance of senatorial debates, motions, and divisions. Cicero 
insisted that if he took his seat in the senate, then his speeches would de- 
mand the inhibition of future warfare. Caesar positively declared that 
this was impossible. So they parted. 

Early in April Cicero begins to call Caesar autocrat (tyrannus). 
Caesar's brief attempt in Rome to manipulate the parliamentary and con- 
stitutional machine, in a quasi-legal manner, had disgusted him. His 
aversion for the Great Council seems to have been passionately bitter. 
' From me, said he, shall everythmg proceed ! ' ^ 

As he marched towards Massilia he was still furious, as Caelius re- 
ported to Cicero from Caesar's headquarters. "Eam.," 8, 16, 1. "Nihil 
nisi atrox et saevum cogitat atque etiam loquitur. Iratus senatui exiit : 
his intercessionibus plane incitatus est." How absurd of Mommsen to 
attempt to make Caesar the champion of liberalism ! He merely used 
the latter sometimes, as mask or as tool. 

Curio was convinced that Caesar's r61e as friend of the people was 
about ended. ("Att.," 10, 7, 3.) 

As for Pompey, his military plans are cast in the lines of Themistocles, 
all for sea-power, and domination there: "for he thinks, that he who 
controls the sea must needs be master of the general situation." (Sound 
views, if only he had adhered to them.) 

" Cuius omne consilium Themistocleum est. Existimat enim, qui 
mare tenet, eum necesse (esse, I would insert) rerum potiri. Itaque 
nunquam id egit, ut Hispaniae per se tenerentur, navalis apparatus ei 
semper antiquissiraa cura fuit. Navigabit igitur, cum erit tempus, 
maximis classibus, et ad Italiam accedet. . . ." "Att.," 10, 8, 1.] 



1 At ille impendio nunc magis odit senatum. ' A me, inquit, omnia 
proficiscentur.'' "Att.," 10, 4, 9. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

CiESAR IN 48 B.C. 

The entire East obeyed Pompey, and the great organ- 
izer had drawn troops, funds, supplies, ships, from that 
vast territory which some thirteen years before he had 
settled with comity towards persons, and with equity 
towards states. Cicero, too, had left the leisure of his 
villas and the incessant scrutinizing of the political horizon, 
and, in spite of Antony's warnings, crossed the sea to join 
Pompey 's headquarters. 

When Caesar was going to Spain, he said to his friends ^ 
he was going to an army without a leader, and thence he 
would return to a leader without an army. The levies 
of the East he certainly did not hold in any estimation. 
But the sea-power was a grave matter. From the islands 
of the ^gean, from Corcyra, from the Piraeus, from 
Pontus, Bithynia, Syria, Cilicia, Phenicia, from Alex- 
andria, had been gathered an armada, of which the chief 
admiral was Bibulus, the bitterest enemy of Caesar in 
public life. 

As for Caesar's ships, they were not even enough to 
transport his troops at one time. The legions too, were 
undermanned : the autumn of southern Italy had made 
ravages in their numbers and impaired the health of 
others. But even so, Caesar would not be checked : the 
very fact that the inclement season had begun made him 
dare to begin an enterprise which in the time of summer 
navigation Bibulus might have ruined or delayed. 

At Brundisium, however, (" B. C," 8, 6) before em- 

iSuet., "Cses.," 34. 
205 



206 ANNALS OF CESAR 

barking, Caesar addressed his veterans : with equanimity 
they should leave behind slaves and baggage ; the room 
of passage must be reserved for themselves ; soon they 
would arrive at the end of hardships and dangers. Vic- 
tory and his own liberality would compensate them for 
everything. With the first transports, Csesar landed on 
the coast of Illyricum on Jan. 5, 48 B.C., but by the solar 
year it was = Nov. 6, 49 b.c.^ 

Clearly Pompey was disturbed and troubled. Caesar's 
coming over at the beginning of winter was, to him, an 
unwelcome and unexpected change of affairs. He was on 
his way to establish his winterquarters by the sea, at 
Apollonia and Dyrrachium. Let us see. No doubt but 
that his intention had been to land in Brundisium, at the 
beginning of navigation, in March-April of the solar 
year 48 B.C., and from that naval base undertake the 
recovery of Italy, as Cicero intimated above. 

Once more Caesar's supreme speed and energy in taking 
an offensive form of initiative startled and disconcerted 
the elderly strategist. 

But as things turned out, the seven months from the 
early part of November to the beginning of the grain- 
harvest were to put Caesar on his mettle. For he con- 
trolled neither the sea nor the interior, and the question 
of supplies became an ever more urgent one. Caesar 
repeatedly offered conferences for conciliation and peace 
even. ("B. C," 3, 10.) It seems difficult to determine 
his sincerity. One thing, however, he knew with cer- 
tainty, viz., that Pompey would refuse, and that thus 
he himself would score a moral advantage with public 
opinion. His own conciliatory demeanor was in sharp 
contrast with the truculent cruelty of Bibulus in dealing 
with occasional prisoners, or entire crews. 

As for Pompey, he refused all parley. This dynast was 
evidently (as his friend Cicero over and over intimates) 
2 lamque hiems appropinquabat. Caes., "B. C," 3, 9, 8. 



CiESAR IN 48 B.C. 207 

consumed with the overwhelming concern for his dignitas^ 
his rank before the contemporary world. It was intoler- 
able for him to think he should owe his return to Italy to 
Caesar's peaceable disposition. ("B. C," 3, 18.) Even 
more radical was Labienus : no peace unless Caesar's head 
was brought into Pompey's headquarters. If Pompey 
just then had boldly crossed over into Italy, if — . . . 
but he was no Caesar. 

Finally, there came about the famous operations about 
Dyrrachium. Caesar, pretty nearly worn out by Pompey's 
Fabian policy, and seeing his own legions half famished,^ 
and passionately desirous of reducing the prestige of the 
hitherto unbeaten conqueror of the East, had to do some- 
thing. Pompey, on his own side, had suffered not a little 
from the taunts of his own partisans as being " a good for 
nothing commander-in-chief." ^ 

Caesar explains his own defeat, but he does not cheapen 
(c. 47) the success of Pompey. Besides, the latter, with 
unlimited supplies arriving by sea, could neither be starved 
nor forced into battle against his own will. Caesar's vet- 
erans indeed, could be heartened by recalling Ilerda, Alesia, 
Avaricum. 

As for water supply, Caesar had done his uttermost 
to stop or spoil the water courses which supplied the 
Pompeians, but here was no situation like that of Uxel- 
lodunum. 

In vain did Caesar offer battle in the open, on even 

terms, to Pompey Meanwhile, through some of his 

lieutenants, Caesar had begun to wrest from Pompey the 
central western part of the Hellenic towns, to which Pho- 
cis and Boeotia were soon added. 

I am no expert in strategy, and must not dabble in 
military science ; but the following seems to be clear, even 
to the lay mind : in marching southeast into the plains of 

iplut., "Caes.," 65. 

2 NuUius usus imperator. " B. C," 3, 45. 



208 ANNALS OF C^SAR ' 

Thessaly, Caesar sought to reestablish his prestige, or to 
gain a pitched battle on more even terms. 

At this juncture Pompey stood before a rare alternative. 
He could follow Csesar. Again, he could cross the Ionic 
Sea into Italy. Having landed at Brundisium, he could 
march to the capital and take it without shedding a drop 
of blood. Also with his domination of the sea he could 
check or prohibit Caesar's transports. 

Now Caesar has expressed himself about these, or similar. 
Contingencies ("B. C," 3, 78); "if Pompey were to push 
in the same direction, he would draw him away from the 
sea and from those resources which Pompey had organized 
at Dyrrachium, and compel him to fight a decisive battle 
(^decertare) with himself on equal strategic terms (^pari 
condicioiie belli} ; if he (Pompey) were to cross over to 
Italy,^ then Caesar would join his army with Domitius 
and march through Illyricum for the support of Italy." 
Meanwhile, however, on the Tiber a profound change of 
situation might have come about. At this time Pompey's 
father-in-law, Metellus Scipio, had come over into northern 
Greece with forces from Syria. These Caesar had observed 
and checked through his legate, Cn. Domitius Calvinus. 
Pompey took the fatal step of following the movement of 
Caesar and joining Scipio, instead of sailing to Italy. 

The battle of Pharsalos ^ occurred on August 9, of the 
uncorrected Roman calendar, then June 6, of solar year. 

Caesar represents Pompey as vaunting and boasting in 
his camp as of a victory already won : after Scipio came 
down with his corps from Larissa, his numbers looked for- 
midable enough. And the spirit of the young noblemen 
at Pompey's headquarters was one of sanguine assurance. 
"They were openly quarrelling about prizes and sacer- 

^ I.e., by sea, of course : transiret. 

2C8es., "B. a," 3, 85, 99; Suet., "Cses.," 35; Dio, 41, 55-61; 
Appian, " B. C," 2, 65-82; Plut., "Cses.," 42-47; Plut., "Pomp.," 
68-72 ; Lucan, 7, 45 sqq. 



CiESAE IN 48 B.C. 209 

dotal honors and made a programme in advance for the 
consular honors : others claimed the houses and property 
of those who were in Caesar's camp." Labienus, with his 
counsels and depreciation of the other side, had been the 
evil genius of Pompey. The battle and the day, however, 
was chosen by Caesar, on whose tent the scarlet banner 
fluttered that June morning. 

f One of the decisive arrangements on Caesar's side was 
this : seeing the enormous advantage which Pompey had 
in cavalry, he anticipated that Pompey would use it for a 
flank movement around Caesar's right wing, which then 
would be exposed to a smothering assault upon the shield- 
less side (latere aperto) : these cavalry masses — so Pom- 
pey had made his dispositions — would then work around 
to Caesar's rear and produce confusion there, even before the 
frontal meeting of the infantry had occurred. On Caesar's 
right was his Legion X. Now for this very assault of 
Pompey's cavalry, Caesar had placed a special reserve, a 
fourth line of six cohorts. At the critical moment Caesar 
let them loose on Pompey's horse (3, 93), which were 
promptly turned and routed. The archers and slingers, 
deprived of this support, were put to the sword. The' 
further details need not detain us. Pompey despaired of 
the day, says Caesar (c. 94), when the great cavalry charge 
had failed. 

' Caesar's entire account, while free from boasting, is per- 
meated with a glow, may we say, of a kind of technical 
and strategic satisfaction. Also, he takes pains to bring 
out his own firmness and perseverance in the policy of 
conciliation and compromise. To stand well with his 
troops was one of the great things of his constant con- 
cern : almost as strong was his almost modern eagerness 
to stand well with public opinion, if not with the ages to 
come. And so, in addressing his veterans before the battle, 
he called them to witness with what zeal he had sought 
peace : his parleying with Scipio through Aulus Clodius, 



210 ANNALS OF CESAR 

his offers through Libo, through Vatinius. " Nor had he 
ever wished to wantonly shed the blood of his soldiers, 
nor desired to deprive the commonwealth of either army." 
Is this true ? For we must not lay down our faculties of 
observation and judgment when dealing with extraordinary 
men. Csesar certainly towards public opinion, on the moral 
side of valuation, was much more delicately sensitive than 
Napoleon. 

Turning once more to the forces which met in Thessaly 
on that sunny day in June, 48 B.C., we must put on rec- 
ord two judgments. One, by Labienus, whose turning 
from Csesar to Pompey we cannot very well endow with 
lofty, perhaps not even with reputable motives. " Do 
not think," he said,i " Pompey, that this is the Army 
which defeated Gaul and Germany. At all the engage- 
ments was I present, and am not rashly making a public 
statement of a thing I know nothing of. A very small 
part of that army is left over ; a great part is dead, which 
could not but happen with so great a number of actions. 
Many did the pestilence of autumn in Italy consume, 
many went home, many were left on the continent. . . . 
These forces which you see, have had their numbers made 
good from the conscriptions of these present years, and 
most of them are from the colonial towns beyond the 
Po." From this utterance, let us turn to an elderly man, 
no soldier, indeed (although aided by his military brother 
he had directed military operations in a distant province 
a few years before), a man, too, who had known Pompey 
intimately for some twenty years, a man, for whom the 
continual study of Pompey had been for some time a 
vital necessity of being and hope. This was Cicero. He 

1 " B. C," 3, 87. Such utterances probably reached Caesar soon 
enough. Caesar took pains to learn all he could of the other side, e.g., 
'castigato Scipione a Favonio, ut postea confecto hello reperiebamus, . . .' 
"B. C," 3, 57. Cf. the address in "B. G.," 7, 77, '. . . ut postea cog- 
nitumest.' "B.C.," 3, 86. 



CESAR IN 48 B.C. 211 

had followed, after some half year of irresolution, across 
the Adriatic, in summer 49. Caesar's political agents, 
Balbus and Oppius, had failed to stop him.^ 

As for Pompey himself, Cicero had considered his 
entire course of action ever since Csesar drove across the 
Rubicon, one chain of blunders. (" Att.," 9, 10, 2.) Cicero 
felt like a lover who is disillusioned by finding the girl 
stupid and a slattern. Deeply had sunk into his heart 
a phrase which often came from Pompey's lips : " Sulla 
could: shall I not be able to do it? " 

It would have been a questionable thing, too, for Pom- 
pey to bring his Asiatic allies into Italy, let alone to 
Rome. It was, then, a kind of personal, or civic senti- 
mentalism^ which finally made Cicero follow Pompey. 
His lively and brilliant mind saw the situation closely. 
The spirit of Sulla was there rampant, he says. The 
orator himself shuddered at the idea of Pompey's victory. 
("Fam.," 7, 3.) Writing a few years after Pharsalos, 
Cicero held that the success at Dyrrachium was pernicious 
to Pompey's strategy and military character. " From 
that time on, that eminent man was no commander at all. 
He undertook a pitched battle, he, with his army of raw 
recruits and soldiery hastily scraped together,^ to meet 
legions of toughest calibre. Most basely whipped, losing 
even his camp, he alone resorted to flight." 



, Pompey abandoned all thoughts of Italy and the Tiber. 
In the East was his prestige and many beneficiaries of his 
former campaigns. Besides, his consort, the youthful 
lady Metella, was in Mitylene. It was vain for him to 
dream of Parthian support. His Greek favorite Theo- 
phanes it was whose counsels turned the prow of his 

i"Att.," 9, 7, A. B. 

2 ' Pudori tamen malui f amaeque cedere quam salutis mese rationem 
ducere,' " Fam.," 7, 3, 1. 

3 Tirone et collecticio exercitu. 



212 ANNALS OF CESAR 

galleys towards the sands of Pelusium. As he consented to 
the fatal invitation to descend into the little boat, the last 
words heard from his lips were two lines of Sophocles : ^ 

'^ Whoever wends his way to despot's throne, 
' His slave is he, though free man erst he came." 

[On his adventurous way in pursuit of his rival, Caesar took pains to 
deal some moral blows to partisans of the former, as when, indeed, he 
claims to have saved the temple treasures of the Ephesian Artemis 2 from 
the spoliation of T. Ampins Balbus, a Pompeian, who could use the pen. 
Nor did Caesar hesitate to relate with a sober and serious face a prodigium 
of Elis : how a figure of Victory, in the temple of Athena there, had faced 
about on the very day of Pharsalos, towards the portals and threshold of 
the temple. So he sought to work upon the minds of his Eastern subjects 
as well as upon the broad mass of his contemporaries everywhere. We 
see that in the next generation Livy (b. 11) copied such ^rodtgria, and 
added some recorded for Pharsalos in Livy's own birthplace of Patavium.* 
Livy himself was about eleven years old at the time. 

To speak soberly : it was for a long time virtually impossible for any 
contemporary of that generation, as well as the next one, to eliminate 
partisanship from any effort of historical composition. We certainly are 
not so naive as to believe that the surviving dynast, Caesar, wrote without 
a very strong desire to advance his own interests, and to discredit the 
other side as much as possible. The Ides of March, 44, did not allay 
that spirit. The matter in Suetonius reveals how in the mad partisan- 
ship of Caesar's times, the figure of the foremost man was dragged in the 
dust by some, while the others were not content with anything short of 
an apotheosis. ] 

The arrival of Caesar in Egypt coincided with a bitter 
quarrel between the children of the late King Ptolemy 
Auletes, whose varying fortunes had been such a gold- 
mine to the Roman politicians, and against whose estate 
Caesar himself still held heavy claims. The two older 
children were two daughters, Cleopatra and Arsinoe, then 
came King Ptolemy, a schoolboy of thirteen, and the last 
was a boy too, a child then. The quarrelling heirs partly 
relied on eunuchs and other unscrupulous men about the 
court. It seems puzzling that they did not all agree to 

1 Appian, "B. C.,"2, 35. 

2 "B. C," 3, 105. 
spiut., "CaBS.,"47. 



CiESAR IN 48 B.C 213 

accept the settlement of the Roman consul, whose power 
in the East there was no one to seriously question. 

Cleopatra, the oldest, was then about twenty-one years 
of age. Her father, Ptolemy Auletes, had been restored 
to his throne by Gabinius in the time of the great pact. 
In a way, any survivor of the Triumvirate was a guarantor 
of the testament of that king. Cleopatra was supremely 
conscious of the possession of those gifts with which she 
quickly made her play at the sensuality and the erotic 
susceptibility of Csesar. The author, indeed, of the Bel- 
lum Alexandrinum, a legatus perhaps of Csesar's, and cer- 
tainly of his inner circle, does not in the slightest degree 
touch upon, nor ever so faintly allude to, this intrigue, 
which began very soon after Cresar's arrival in Egypt. 

First, Arsinoe began a war with the Roman imperator: 
really, it was her eunuch minister, Ganymedes. Later, 
the schoolboy king himself, with histrionic tears and quite 
precocious hypocrisy,^ succeeded in making his escape from 
Caesar's headquarters in the great palace of the dynasty, 
or better, in gaining permission to go away. Caesar's gen- 
erosity was easily wrought upon. This incident, however, 
masking the designs of older men, was that which really 
made the rising of Alexandria a formidable matter for 
Caesar's military craft and cunning. 



i"Bell. Alex.," 24. 



CHAPTER XIX 

C^SAR IK 47 B.C. 

In the latter part of March, 47 B.C., this Alexandrine 
war came to an end, when the schoolboy king, in his golden 
gleaming corselet, perished in the Nile : by the solar year 
the operations extended from Aug., 48, to about Jan. 15 
of the year 47 B.C. As for the conqueror, his own com- 
parative resourcelessness was in the beginning but ill 
matched against the vast treasures and supplies of that 
metropolis. It was only when there arrived from Syria 
the reinforcements summoned by Csesar and commanded 
by Mithridates of Pergamos, that the former was in a 
position to conclude the whole enterprise and settle the 
kingdom. The decisive victory over the schoolboy king 
had occurred on March 27 of the uncorrected calendar. ^ 
The many elements of romance and adventure concerning 
his sojourn on the Nile need not detain us. We notice, 
however, a few significant matters in ancient tradition 
before passing on into the peninsula of Asia Minor. 

[According to Dio (42, 7), when head and seal-ring of Pompey were 
brought to CiTesar upon his landing at Alexandria, he shed tears and was 
moved to warm words also. Dio says that ' they ' (who ?) laughed at 
this performance. The eunuchs of that miserable court ? Is this one of 
the free psychological observations of Dio, or did he follow Livy here ? 
Certainly the partisans of Pompey, when they heard of it, made mockery 
of this grave and solemn scene. 

The hexameters of Lucan are even more bitter, 9, 1037 : — 

Utque fidem vidit sceleris tutumque putavit 
lam bonus esse socer, lacrimas non sponte cadentis 
Effudit gemitusque expressit pectore Iseto 
Non aliter manifesta potens abscondere mentis 
Gaudia quam lacrimis. . . . 

1 Fasti Prsenestini, sub March 27 : Hoc die Csesar Alexand. Recepit. 

214 



CiESAR IN 47 B.C. 215 

^ As to the latter part of his stay on the Nile, Suetonius (" Cses.," 52) 
says that he made a tour with Cleopatra up the Nile to the confines of 
Ethiopia, on a vessel equipped with elaborate cabins (nave thalamego) : 
perhaps we meet here the trace of Pompeian pens ^ which Suetonius has 
manifestly followed in certain sections of his important biography. — Dio's 
account of the Alexandrine war bears hard on Caesar: " He gave Egypt 
as a gratuity to Cleopatra, for whose sake also he had waged the war " (42, 
44). Besides, Cleopatra bore a son to Csesar. Appian, whose account 
in many ways is hurried and inaccurate, confirms Suetonius with detail 
of his own ("B. C," 2, 90): "He toured with Cleopatra on the Nile, 
with four hundred ships, viewing the country." Plutarch ("Cfes.," 48) 
quotes a twofold tradition : Some censured the Alexandrine war of Csesar 
as due to his infatuation for Cleopatra ; others accused powerful members 
of the schoolboy king's court, such as Potheinos, who resorted to special 
wiles to make Caesar's sojourn in the palace odious to the soldiers of the 
royal guard : also that Cleopatra gave birth to Csesario a very short time 
before Csesar hurried away to Pontus.] 

This was the much- vaunted campaign against Phar- 
naces^ son and murderer of the great Mithridates. Like 
his southeastern neighbors, the Parthians, this despot, in 
Pompey's last campaign, had withheld all aid from the 
latter, hoping to make a better conclusion in the inevita- 
ble settlement with the ultimate victor. The heir of Pon- 
tus was in a measure emboldened to hold out, because he 
had defeated Caesar's governor, Domitius Calvinus, left 
in charge of Asia^ the Roman province so called. The 
Pontic tyrant had actually overrun Lesser Armenia and 
Cappadocia, and was dreaming of repeating his father's 
conquest of Asia Minor, forty years before. These events 
occurred late in the autumn of 48 B.C. 

Caesar now, having left Egypt, sailed from Syria to 
Cilicia. Thence, with extraordinary speed, he pushed 
across the Taurus and through Cappadocia, for he was 
impatient once more to reach the imperial capital, whence 
there were coming despatches relating the almost com- 
plete demoralization of the civil government. Also Csesar 

'^ E.g., T. Ampius Balbus, Suet., "Cses.," 77, whom Csesar had be- 
smirched in "B. C," 3, 105. 



216 ANNALS OF CAESAR 

heard of a mutinous spirit widely prevailing among some 
of his most valuable veteran legions. (" Bell. Alex.," 65.^ 

But impatient as he was, he still found time everywhere 
to ordain a settlement of all internal dissensions and feuds 
with neighbors in those communities through which he 
passed. So, too, in Mazaca, the capital of Cappadocia.^ — 
In penalizing Deiotarus the Galatian, he rejected the lat- 
ter's defense (for having helped Pompey) in a manner 
and with arguments of which we will take notice. He, 
Csesar (so he made rejoinder to the hapless Gallogrecian), 
in the campaign of Epirus and Macedon, had truly (sz<?) 
represented the home government, Rome and Italy, peo- 
ple and senate. The conqueror made good use of the 
apparatus and terms of constitutional government, when- 
ever that could be conveniently done. 

While moving into Pontus to close with that despot, 
he kept replying to the latter's emissaries without slack- 
ening his own movement. He refused to credit Phar- 
naces with especial loyalty towards himself in having 
abstained from sending any contingents to Pompey. The 
king's outrages perpetrated upon provincials and Roman 
citizens at Amisus, he might condone, but Pharnaces 
must abandon Pontus, and make reparation to Roman 
tax-farmers and other injured persons. Clearly, Csesar 
designed to keep the tyrant in hope and humor ; the 
latter, in turn, well-informed of the civic disorder at 
Rome,^ knew that Csesar must needs soon go thither, and 
so began to procrastinate. Caesar, in his turn, a miser of 
his time then, was compelled to act both swiftly and deci- 
sively. Near Zela, some forty-five miles west-southw^est 
from Comana Pontica, Caesar grappled with Pharnaces. 

The king, with a sanguine confidence often bred in 
autocrats by their flatterers, actually took the offensive, 
descending down a valley, one mile from Ccesar's position, 

1 Kiepert, Lehrbuch der Alten Geographie, 1878, p. 93, note 2. 

2 "Bell. Alex.," 71. 



CiESAR IN 47 B.C. 217 

while the latter was still being fortified: the Roman was 
astounded at the other's boldness. The rout of the Pontic 
ruler began on the right wing of the Romans, where stood 
the Vlth Legion, the only seasoned body of troops then 
with Caesar, which he had brought from Egypt. The ad- 
vantage of topography rendered Caesar's success over- 
whelming. He had not expected to begin and end a 
campaign of some difficulty by one and the same stroke : 
a campaign too absolutely necessary to secure the eastern 
frontier of the empire. The elation which he there felt, 
found vent in the famous words sent to one of his parti- 
sans in Rome in a letter. 

[When one compares the exact account of the military relation ("Bell. 
Alex.," 72-77) with the later historians (such as Dio, 42, 47), we come 
upon several points worthy of notice. The laconic " Fe«i, Vidi, Vici''^ 
(according to Plut., "Cses.," 50), were first used in a letter to ^'^ Aman- 
tius'''' in Home: perhaps Matius. In his Pontic triumph these words, 
painted in huge letters on a frame of canvas, were carried in the parade. 
(Suet., "Caes.," 37.) We also learn from Suetonius (35) that Caesar 
frequently, after Zela no doubt, referred to Pompey, and the luck of that 
commander which had ennobled him through successes over antagonists 
of so flimsy calibre : truly no Vercingetorix, no Ariovist.] 

All the loot from the king Caesar awarded to his troops. 
Their loyalty and personal devotion were more than ever 
essential, not only to his further plans, but also to his 
political existence. 

Moving westwards towards JEgean and Adriatic, he 
settled everything on a Caesarean basis. Pompey, indeed, 
had attached these districts to his own fortunes. Pompey 
was no more. But nowhere could the conqueror and con- 
servator of empire tarry long. The disorder at the cap- 
ital was urgently demanding his personal presence. (" Bell. 
Alex.," 78.) He passed westward, through Greece, and at 
length, somewhat unexpectedly after all, landed at Taren- 
tum, about July 1 of solar year. 

Not far from this Italo-Grecian city, at or near Brun- 
disium, the most eminent, we may say, of the dictator's 



218 ANNALS OF CJESAR 

subjects, had spent nine or ten months from September, 
48, to July, 47 B.C. (corrected time). These had been 
for him among the most hopeless and gloomy months 
in a life which, during the twelve last years, had passed 
through an uncommon measure of disappointment, dis- 
comfiture, disillusionment, sadness, and sorrow. This 
was Cicero. 

A large amount of his correspondence, dated in this 
grave period of Roman history, has been preserved. It 
was indeed a political season, in which a merely cunning 
and diplomatic ingenium would perhaps have allowed his 
pen to lie idle, and merely watch the currents, and the 
foam and bubbles on the surface of the currents of the 
political tide. Of those who had followed the fortunes of 
Pompey in Epirus and Macedon, Cicero and Lselius alone 
had been permitted by the victor to return to the soil of 
Italy, where the reckless voluptuary and energetic man 
of action, Mark Antony, held sway as Caesar's viceroy. 
Thenceforward, only after C?esar himself had tried the 
particular case, could any Pompeian return to Italy. 
(" Att.," 11, 7, 2.) His directions, by letter, to Antony, 
had even been tinctured with bitterness or anger.i 

Cicero, himself, held himself dissolved from any further 
allegiance to Pompey, first, after Pharsalos, and even 
more after the tragedy on the sands of Egypt. It is nec- 
essary for the larger purpose of these lectures, to repeat 
and urge still another thing : we need not, must not, en- 
dow Csesar with motives or a consciousness hatched out 
in Mommsen's brain chiefly, of which the adroit and am- 
bitious politician was ignorant. At the same time, we are 
dealing with a difficult and elusive period of history. It 
is tinctured, in the ancient tradition, at almost all points, 
with the prejudice and the purpose to injure and be- 
smirch, engendered by partisanship in partisans. 

1 Vehementius scriptum erat, ib. 



CiESAR IN 47 B.C. 219 

These, in their opposition to monarchy, in the course of 
the civil war, more and more had been forced to stake life 
itself and all its boons and hopes. Foolish to call them 
fools or scoundrels for their opposition to Hegel's and 
Mommsen's World-spirit. — Still, as we now read the 
times with the invaluable aid of Cicero's correspondence, 
we are, in our turn, in all fairness, driven to the conclu- 
sion that Pompey's victory would have no less established 
a monarchy, with a monarch inferior at almost all points 
to Csesar, and that the bearers of his purple train would 
have been a famished and desperate oligarchy, ruthless 
and bent upon a reenactment of the Sullanian times. 

Before the catastrophe of Pharsalos, the partisans of 
Pompey had mapped out the coming proscription at 
Rome, not merely by individuals hut hy classes^ Cicero 
was bitterly hated for not having followed Scipio, Cato, 
Labienus, and Afranius to Africa. But the orator's esti- 
mate of the Numidian king, Juba, was proved quite cor- 
rect by the events. To ' defend the government ' (what 
government, indeed ?) with the aid of the cunning and 
treacherous Numidian he deemed supremely unwise. 
('^Att.,"ll, 9,1.) 

Early in January, 47, Cicero firmly expected confiscation 
even of the personal estate of the lady Terentia, his wife. 
(" Att.," 11, 9, 1.) On his birthday at fifty-nine he wrote 
(ib., §3): "Would that I never had been begotten, or 
that no further cliild had been born of that same mother ! " 
For even his own brother and nephew were now in ^gean 
waters, setting the dictator against their own brother and 
uncle, as though they might gain some favor or profit 
through the orator's ruin. 

To add to the corroding cares of a mind fairly dis- 
traught even so, the news from Africa was ever growing 
better for the enemies of Caesar, enemies whose actual 

Non nominatim, sed generatim. " Att.," 11, 6, 2. 



220 ANNALS OF CiESAR 

descent upon the coasts of Italy the wretched recluse of 
Brundisium often expected and dreaded. In April-May, 
47, we learn ("Att.," 11, 14, 1) that all the partisans of 
Pompey both in Greece and in Ionia, who had failed of a 
pardon, and moreover, even those also who had gotten it, 
were said to be about to sail for Africa. Cicero calls 
them deprecatores. What hopes he still nourished in that 
dismal spring — slender hopes — were from Ceesar. Even 
from Alexandria the news of April (solar year) were 
gloomy. Spain, too, about this time, seemed virtually 
lost to Ceesar. 

One of the most vicious features in Csesar's struggling 
for the principate was the necessity of giving places and 
great offices to the men who helped him : his adversaries 
called him broker of provinces. He was not able to ignore 
such claims even when he would. 

When the victor of Ilerda, Sicoris, and Ebro quit Spain 
in the waning summer of 49, he left as governor of Far- 
ther Spain, the tribune, Q. Cassius Longinus, who, with 
Antony and the outraged constitution, had fled to Ravenna 
early in that year. Even as qusestor for Pompey in 54, he 
had become odious to the provincials for his cruelty and 
rapacity. The breed of Verres was to be found quite as 
much among Ccesar's supporters as those following Pom- 
pey. — This extortioner, then, bitterly hated of the pro- 
vincials, sought security by giving excessive bounties to 
his troops. His civil administration was an endless chain 
of oppression and wringing of money out of the Spaniards 
not only, but of resident Romans also. Neither in his pal- 
ace nor on the tribunal of jurisdiction, was there omitted 
anything that might enrich him. Bail bonds or indict- 
ments or any form of prosecution and persecution were 
always ready whenever it became known that a given 
man had wealth. 

Finally at Corduba, an attempt was made upon his life : 
but it is impossible here further to pursue the utter admin- 



C^SAR IN 47 B.G. 221 

istrative failure of this Csesarean appointee. Hirtius him- 
self, or whoever wrote the Bellum Alexandrinum^ sketches 
the acts of Cassius Longinus without any palliation as those 
of a veritable reprobate. It was this appointee then, who, 
particularly in the districts which we now call Andalusia 
and Portugal, rendered futile the genius and wisdom 
which Csesar had exhibited in the settlement of Iberian 
affairs, after his campaign of the Sicoris. This alienation 
Cicero refers to as the 'performance of Cassius.' ("Att.," 
11, 16, 1.) — At the time when this news from Spain 
reached Cicero, he had no explanation for the ' delay at 
Alexandria.'' ^ He could not then know anything of Cleo- 
patra, whom he met later on in Rome when Csesar placed 
her in his Transtiberine villa. Her hauteur then nettled 
his pride. 

,' But to return : About this time in the capital, one of 
the sensational figures in political and society life was P. 
Cornelius Dolabella, last husband of poor Tullia, Cicero's 
beloved child. He was a tribune in 47, and a fair product 
of that generation of decadence and demoralization. By 
day he stirred up the rabble of Rome, and, himself hope- 
lessly burdened with debt, he proposed statutes for scaling 
or cancelling debts or house-rents. Catiline had many 
successors, and the memories of Clodius were still green ; 
but that of all men his own son-in-law should fairly outdo 
the pair, this was to the timid and troubled recluse of 
Brundisium, indeed, the overflowing of his cup brewed 
for him by the irony of Fortune. To this was added the 
scandalous chain of Dolabella's intrigues with other men's 
wives. Cicero's fair name and all his dearest convictions 
were dragged in the dust by such a son-in-law. (" Att.," 
11, 23, 3.) 

/Among those who opposed the new Clodius was that 
brilliant and rising talent, young Asinius Pollio, then 

1 Mora Alexandrina causam illorum correxit, meam evertit. "Att.," 
11, 16, 2. 



222 ANNALS OF CiESAR 

tribunus plebis. Finally, Antony with troops restored a 
semblance of order in the capital. 

The legions in Italy destined to go to the African war, 
treated with contumely and began to stone one of his, 
Caesar's, chief lieutenants, Publius Sulla. The general 
belief in that summer was, that none of these important 
and indispensable bodies of veterans would stir from the 
spot.i 

In the attachment of Napoleon's troops there was 
blended for many years the sentiment of French patriot- 
ism ; Cromwell's Ironsides were stirred even by loftier 
motives. The attachment of Ceesar's legionary infantry 
was purely a military and professional one. Pay, boun- 
ties, loot, a provision of land-assignments for their declin- 
ing years, bound them to his person. After all they were 
simply splendid mercenaries, in whose range of motives 
and concerns political convictions or civic aspirations fig- 
ured but slightly. Even Mommsen and the Mommsenians 
could not well dub them Roman patriots, however vigor- 
ously they bore to the world the evangel of the World- 
spirit. 

Pretty early in September of the civic year ( = early 
July of the sun), then, Caesar landed at Tarentum, and 
soon moved on to Brundisium. 

Cicero went out to meet him (Plut., "Cic," 39), not 
so much in a frame of pessimism as of humiliation in his 
actual sense of helplessness, while many eyes were looking 
on. But the generous soul of Caesar was there : he dis- 
mounted and walked with the stricken and homeless man 
of letters many stadia along the highway. No extant 
letters of Cicero tell of that conversation,^ nor of the con- 
solation and relief then granted his harassed being. Ended 

1 Nullam se putant commoturam. " Att.," 11, 21, 2. 

2 The epistles from Brundisium to Atticus end with "Att.," 11, 22, 
written towards the end of August, civil year. This cessation marks also 
the date of Caesar's landing at Tarentum. 



CJESAR IN 47 B.C. 223 

at last was that long period of fear and gloom. Soon after, 
Cicero forsook his abode of exile, and his villas as well as 
his mansion on the Palatine knew him once more. 



Caesar would have gone straight to Africa (Dio, 42, 50) 
had it not been for the disorders at the capital. But there 
were other concerns also. He himself needed enormous 
sums of money in order to go forward in the path in 
which he could neither stand still nor retreat. At this 
time, it would seem, he took positive steps to confiscate 
the property of the obstinate Pompeians. Such sales 
were quite real, as far as the civil law was concerned. 
If his own favorites bought and failed to pay, their own 
sureties were bound to suffer. The public, of course, 
noted the persons who were conspicuous by their financial 
operations or as bidders at these auctions. Here P. Sulla 
seems to have attended more than any other of Csesar's 
followers. Amantius, too, became thus notorious to the 
conservatives. 1 The profligate Antony, of all men in 
Rome, bid in the great mansion of Pompey in the street 
called Carince: a radical change of inmates. ^ The riotous 
and disreputable^ gambled and drank in the city palace of 
the great captain, where beaks of pirates' vessels adorned 
the splendid vestibule, and where domestic virtues had 
had an abode and an affirmation rare in the corrupt 
and decadent aristocracy of that generation. As Cicero 
thought of him, dead, when spiritual things stand out 
more clearly, the former proprietor of that mansion had 
been honest in matters of money, he had been temperate 
and a faithful husband. 

But the dictator was no moral reformer, nor could he, 
at that particular time, even chide those of his lieutenants 

iPlut., "Cffis.," 51. 
2Cic., "2 Phil." 
3 Of both sexes. 



224 ANNALS OF CJESAR 

whose profligacy made his power odious. Too long had 
he looked upon men as mere instruments. Not as souls, 
but as political and military instruments, were they 
ranged before his vision. And this we may say without 
adopting the tone of furious bitterness such as Cicero used 
after Caesar's death. ^ Neither Antony nor Dolabella was 
thrown over by the returned dictator. The more desper- 
ate their private fortunes, the clearer the necessity of 
clinging to him in the future, a period which still needed 
reckless and resolute men for the further tasks of the nas- 
cent monarch}^ And so Csesar honored even the new 
Clodius, viz., Dolabella, and promised him the consular 
honor for the year 44 B.C. (Dio, 42, 33), although he 
never had been praetor. 

As to the wider distress of debtors and tenants (Dio, 
42, 51), he furnished partial relief. For, as a genuine 
statesman, he strove never to make enemies out of a con- 
solidated class. In settling indebtedness, he ordained 
that creditors must accept the valuation of houses and 
lands which had prevailed before the Civil War : for 
the confiscations had at the moment greatly depressed 
values. 

His political partisans he repaid in various ways. He 
increased the numbers of pontijices and augurs. Of prae- 
tors, says Dio (Livy ?) somewhat bluntly, he appointed 
ten, "in order to requite the greater number." 

In dealing with the mutinous veterans he exhibited 
that psychological tact which puzzled and surprised his 
contemporaries. He did not beg nor flatter, but main- 
tained a quasi-sovereign control. He did not let them 
know that they were the indispensable instruments of his 
ambition and props of his imperial pretension. Some he 
confronted in person, on the Field of Mars. He knew that 
they did not sincerely wish to be discharged at all. That 
this should be promptly revealed he accomplished by ad- 

1^.^., "Off.," 1, 112; 3, 82. 



C^SAR IN 47 B.C. 225 

dressing them as Quirites, citizens, civil persons. But in 
merely civic life and its quiet pursuits they had long 
ceased to have any stake or serious concern. (Dio, 42, 
53.) They realized that there was no other career for 
them, and that they needed him at least as much as he 
needed them.^ His flattering habit of addressing them 
as '"''Fellow-soldiers^^ did not deceive them, although it was 
wont to warm their hearts. His deliberate manner of 
making record of individual bravery is a feature of the 
Coimnentarii to which we shall revert in the proper place. 
Actually, the shrewd generalissimo (Dio, 42, b6') discerned 
the malcontents and left them at home. For now there 
was before him a struggle in every way more serious and 
severe than the quickly decided combat among the Thes- 
salian grain-fields in June, 48. It was on Dec. 19, 47 
(actually, about Oct. 1, 47), that he arrived at Lilybseum, 
in western Sicily, at once pitching his tent so closely by 
the sea that it was wetted by the spray. His imj)atience 
to be off was remarked by all : it seemed reckless to sail 
to Africa with the slender forces as yet available, at 
a time when Metellus Scipio, the father of Pompey's 
widow, generalissimo of the Constitutionalists, could re- 
view ten Roman legions, to which were added many other 
forces and a fleet greatly exceeding that of the dictator. 
Juba's Numidian cavalry proved to be important in the 
impending winter campaign. Caesar's landing was effected 
late in December (about October 11) near Hadrumetum. 
His staff-officers were surprised that no impediment con- 
fronted them. 2 With him at first he had but three thou- 
sand infantry and one hundred fifty troopers. To his 
naval commanders Csesar had not given any sealed orders 
as to what port should be made. It was all a matter 
of circumstance and quick determination, a situation in 
which great captains always are revealed. 

1 Add also Appiaii, 2, 94; Suet., "Caes.," 67. 

2 " Bellum Africum," 3. 
Q 



CHAPTER XX^ 

C^SAR IK 46 B.C. 

On January 1 (= October 13) he arrived near Leptis 
on the sea. It was, as I said, an autumn and winter cam- 
paign, if measured by the actual physical season. The 
movements and manoeuvres of January, February, March, 
were indecisive. In the earlier part of this time his 
forces were too small for any decisive engagements. One 
marvels that his antagonists did not resolutely undertake 
to smother and overwhelm him. For they knew well 
that the dictator's troops ^ were largely new recruits, that 
many of the old legions in Italy had been mutinous. 

Gradually, however, by reinforcements arriving from 
Sicily, Csesar's position was improved. For some time he 
maintained a defensive attitude, foreign to his genius and 
temperament. There were many hardships. Seaweeds 
macerated in sweet water and then dried had to pass as 
fodder for beasts of burden. ^ 

At Rome, meanwhile, anxiety prevailed, and all kinds 
of news were eagerly believed. Cicero and many of his 
friends could not look forward with any cheerfulness ^ to 
a decisive victory of either party, no matter what the 
legality or constitutional pretences put forward by each. 
Perhaps Sullanian times were to come again after all. 

As for the African coast-line, where matters were taper- 
ing to an issue, we have reason to believe that procrastina- 

1 "B. Afr.," 16. 

2"B. Afr.,"24; Plut., "Cges.," 53. 

3 Est enim res iam ad eum locum adducta, ut, quamquam multum 
intersit inter eorum causas qui dimicant, tamen ; inter victorias non 
multum interfuturum putem. (Cic, " Fam.," 5, 21, 3.) 

226 



CiESAR IN 46 B.C. 227 

tion for once was due to Caesar, whom the passing of time 
made stronger, both in supplies and in trained troops. 

The Pompeian leaders were puzzled. (" B. Afr.," 35.) 
Still they seem to have acted with ruthless cruelty when- 
ever Csesareans fell into their hands. Political treason, 
and following the eagles of Csesar, in their judgment and 
practice, were one and the same thing. 

Caesar really used the first four months of this pecul- 
iar campaign to drill his men and to season them : " to 
train them as a drillmaster trains raw gladiators ; how 
many feet they should fall back from the foe and how, 
while confronting their opponents, and within how small 
a space they should make their stand, again fall back and 
threaten assault, and almost in what spot and how they 
were to discharge their pila^ — would he teach them.'* 
("B. Afr.," 71.) Then, too, here were not Gauls to fight, 
men who knew nothing of wiles and ambush, but only 
open valor, whereas the Numidians were cunning, crafty, 
resourceful in ambush and in all wiles of warfare. On 
March 21 (uncorrected), 46, Caesar held a review of all 
his troops. Soon after reinforcements arrived by sea. 
Repeatedly he now offered battle to the Pompeians. 
Finally, on April 4, he marched on Thapsus and began to 
invest this town, thus compelling Scipio to come to the 
relief of this community. When Scipio committed the 
fatal blunder of placing his stockade upon a narrow strip 
of land, about one and a half miles wide, between the sea 
and the salt marshes, the keen eye of the great captain 
saw promptly that the time and the hour were at hand. 
The Xth Legion, too, was now once more with him. (" B. 
Afr.," 81.) Personally he hurried from troop to troop, 
and roused the spirit of his men to the highest pitch of 
eagerness and confidence. 

And still he seems to have personally preferred a defen- 
sive attitude on that day, but the enthusiasm of the rank 
and file finally made him consent to a vigorous advance. 



228 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

The elephants were soon routed and the stockade taken. 
Scipio's infantry broke and fled. Caesar pursued them 
hotly, so as not to permit them to form once more. In 
vain they sought refuge in Juba's camp ; it had already 
been taken. Breathless, they halted on a hill and made 
the signs of surrender. 

But Csesar's veterans Avere maddened and enraged, 
actually slaying in their fury those who would stay them, 
distinguished men on their own side, Romans from the 
capital. Several senators and equestrian gentlemen of 
Csesar's own lines fled to the very person of the dictator, 
to save themselves from their own infuriated legionaries. 
So this awful butchery proceeded, while Caesar himself, 
for once helpless, looked on, in vain entreating his veter- 
ans to spare the foe, who had ceased to fight. (" B. Afr.," 
85.) This was the battle of Thapsus. In the nineteen 
months which had gone by since Pompey sadly rode away 
from Pharsalos to Tempe and the sea, clearly the entire 
Civil War had risen to greater intensity in the desperate 
spirit of the contestants. It seemed to tend towards a 
recrudescence of Sullanian times. Could the dictator 
maintain the moderate and statesmanlike policy which he 
had mapped out for himself ? 

[The ancient tradition of this momentous battle exhibits some curious 
divergences. Plutarch (C. 53) him-self reports two versions: according 
to one, fifty thousand were slain, while Csesar lost but fifty ; according 
to another (perhaps Tanusius or Ampius) Csesar was not even personally 
present, but was suffering from an attack of his besetting malady, 
epilepsy.] 

The date was April 6 of the uncorrected calendar. — 
From Thapsus, by way of various posts now submitting, 
Caesar, granting pardon to several Pompeians of note, 
such as Ligarius and Caecina, moved on towards Utica, on 
the outskirts of which he arrived at dusk.^ But the 

1 ' Circiter luminibus accensis,' "B. Afr.," 89, one of the many little 
traits pointing to the fact that the author was much about the person of 
Caesar in this campaign. 



CiESAR IN 46 B.C. 229 

noblest of his adversaries, Cato, was no more. When 
the news of the catastrophe reached him, the stern and 
fearless man at first endeavored to organize a defence of 
Utica. But when he saw that those whom he meant 
should be the defenders lacked all spirit and hope, he 
arranged that as many as possible should embark and seek 
refuge in Spain, the last resort of the Pompeians. As for 
himself, he disdained either to flee or to meet the new 
monarch at all. His speech, his mien, were unchanged, 
no intimation of fear, no anxiety or despair. He died the 
consistent Stoic he had lived, his last concern having been 
with the immortality of the soul. The last book he read 
was Plato's "Phsedo."! 

i His death was a bitter disappointment to Csesar. Of 
all his antagonists this one had been the purest-minded 
and the one of longest standing, the most persistent as 
well as consistent, the one whom neitlier fear nor gain 
could move,2 the one who had penetrated into the inner- 
most recesses of Csesar's design and political character 
long before the beginning of the Civil War. Even at 
thirty-one, in the great debate of Dec. 5, 63, he had deter- 
mined the issue by his powerful personality. Postulating 
an honest enforcement of the constitutional tradition, both 
in the home government and in the provincial administra- 
tion, he condemned the acts of all the dynasts and their 
personal policies, but thinly veiled under the forms of the 
past, while they granted to each other and accepted from 
each other what really belonged to the commonwealth. 
He stood alone. — Csesar is said to have given vent to his 
feelings in these words : " O Cato, I envy you your 
death: for you too begrudged me your preservation." 

1 " Testimonium Animae," p. 380 sq. 

2 Perhaps the enigmatic passage in Suet., "Aug.," 87, may now be 
solved: "et cum hortatur, ferenda esse prsesentia qualiacumque sint: 
contend simus hoc Catone.''^ That is to say, Cato symbolizes a trouble 
that we cannot rid ourselves of, but must bear somehow. Many lessons 
did Augustus learn from the career of his adoptive father. 



230 ANNALS OF CAESAR 

(Plut., » Cato Mill.," 72.) Little doubt that the dictator 
had proposed for himself acts of particularly conspicuous 
generosity and forbearance. For the purpose of settling 
the spirits of his generation everywhere, this pardon of 
Cato would have been for the statesman Csesar of incal- 
culable value. 

Caesar, after Thapsus, remained about two months 
longer in Africa. Adding Numidia as a new province to 
the empire, he appointed as first governor Crispus Sallus- 
tius as a reward for his partisan devotion. 

The enormous wealth gained there by the later histo- 
rian, in a very short time, roused the moral irony of 
sober-minded observers like Varro later on. Sallust 
himself, writing after the death both of Csesar and Cato, 
bestowed upon Cato imperishable praise, he too, Sallust, 
the very man who owed everything to Cato's antagonist. 
As to the settlement of the new province, as Dio (43, 9) 
presents the matter, the dictator gave his ofBcer orders 
to loot and ravage it under form of organization. 

As to Caesar's policy of magnanimity in dealing with 
defeated and submissive adversaries, one must admit that 
his generosity had been again and again abused. When 
we compare the record of the author of the "Bellum 
Africum " (c. 89) with Dio's survey (43, 12-13) of what 
actually happened, then we may conclude that Caesar, 
while still, by certain overt acts, using or asserting this 
policy of leniency, was actually becoming much sterner. 

At Rome, when the complete success of Caesar became 
known, the dictator's partisans were in ecstasies, and con- 
gratulations were the order of the day. Men like Cicero 
and Varro were almost out of place on streets and forum : 
they, too, were counted among the vanquished. ^ Cicero 
thought of going down to the Gulf of Naples, and at 
Baiae to live for a while in seclusion, ' not to swim, but to 
lament.' Still, from this time on there is met with, in 
1 ' Quasi victos nos intuentur,' " Fam.," 9, 2, 2. 



CiESAR IN 46 B.C. 231 

his correspondence, a new and positive sentiment. When- 
ever the military work of Caesar was fully completed, 
some measure of rehabilitation of constitutional forms, 
some way of reestablishing an orderly government of 
courts and laws could not well be deferred. Even in a 
subsidiary way he would be willing to assist, if the dic- 
tator were to call upon him. (" Fam.," 9, 2, 5.) 

When Csesar left Africa, naturally his plans and move- 
ments were the foremost object of public concern. Would 
he go by way of Baise or of Sardinia ? Actually he took 
the latter course. The provinces of the empire had now 
virtually become Caesar's 'farms.' So Cicero in a private 
letter to Varro expresses the matter ("Fam.," 9, 7, 1): 
" For that farm of his he has never yet looked over : he 
has none worse than this one, but still he does not despise 
it." Bitter words, but luminous with the truth of what 
was actual and real. Caesar, at this stage, had come to 
know all his ' farms ' but this one. Spain and Gaul, 
Africa, Macedon, and Achaia, Asia, Cappadocia, Pontus, 
Bithynia, Cilicia, Syria, or Sicily : he knew them all, and 
his own eye and hand could determine what crops they 
could send to the granaries of the landlord, what taxes 
and imposts they could bear in war and peace. On 
June 14 (about April 14 of solar year) Cicero first 
broached to Atticus (" Att.," 12, 4) the project of writing 
a memorial monograph on Cato. It was, he said, bound 
to annoy partisans of the victor, even if Cicero were to 
limit himself to the character of Cato and avoid all politi- 
cal valuations and judgments. To the man of letters 
indeed, retired from public life, and not insensible of 
the dictator's considerate treatment of himself, it was in- 
deed an ' Archimedian problem,' i.e., a very difficult one. 
But Cicero, the idealist, once more was too much for 
Cicero, the worldly wise man. The labor of composition 
gave him keen pleasure. ("Att.," 12, 5, 3.) The remi- 
niscent mood in Cicero ever makes the present bitter to 



232 ANNALS OF CAESAR 

his soul : ' And now what am I doing ? I am bearing 
what must be borne, which is very far from positive 
approval.' ('' Fam.," 9, 6.) 

The return of the dictator to the capital occurred 
about the 26th of July. Almost all the leaders of the 
other party had perished. Lentulus, . Scipio, Af ranius, 
Cato, — all were gone. ("Fam.," 9, 18, 2.) Even the 
favorites of Csesar, such as Balbus, are referred to by 
Cicero sometimes as 'kings,' or 'royal persons.' ("Fam.," 
9, 19, 1.) Mere physical survival sometimes appears to 
him as something in the nature of pure gain, something 
unearned. (" Fam.," 9, 17, 1.) TJie government is dead. 
Csesar himself is too deeply enmeshed in the bonds of 
political obligation. He could not restore constitutional 
government if he would. (lb.) The chief (princeps) does 
not even himself know what is going to be. " For we are 
slaves to liim^ he himself to the times : so neither he knows 
what the times are going to demand, nor can we know 
what the subject-matter of his reflections is." (lb., § 3.) 
" We were wont to sit at the helm and hold the rudder, 
but now there is barely a spot for us down in the hold 
where the bilge-water is." (" Fam.," 9, 15,3.) As for 
Senatus Consulta, they are passed as of yore ; but they are 
composed at the house of Balbus. (lb., § 4.) My own 
name is officially used in S. C, of the very contents of 
which I am completely ignorant. I hope that by and by 
there will be some kind of a government. But whatever 
it will be, it will be a gift of the dictator. — The omnipo- 
tence of Ccesar at all points of the empire he urges in a 
letter to the school friend of his youth, M. Marcellus (con- 
sul of 51) ("Fam.," 4, 8), whom he urges to avail himself 
of Caesar's magnanimity and to return from his exile in 
Greece. For once we are afforded a glimpse of the inward 
Csesar : " He feared mainly this, that the exiles would not 
esteem it a kindness to be allowed to come back." 

Even more the complete monarchy of the actual situa- 



CiESAR IN 46 B.C. 233 

tion is brought out by Cicero in a notable passage ad- 
dressed to the same exile (" Fam.," 4, 9) : " For all things 
have been bestowed upon 07ie. As for his using counsel, he 
does not use even that of his own adherents, but his own 
alone, which would not be much otherwise, if he held 
the government whom we followed" (viz., Pompey). 
Caesar, says Cicero, would like to attach to his service the 
real first-class men ; his nature is gentle and kindly ; he 
never refers to Pompey but in terms of respect. In Sep- 
tember Cicero writes from Rome to the exile Ligarius 
("Fam.," 6, 13) : "Csesar is steadily turning more gener- 
ous, but it comes about more slowly than we desire (viz., 
your recall from exile). On account of the weighty en- 
gagements of him from whom everything is sought, access 
to him has been more difficult, and at the same time he 
seems to wish to appear more a7igry for a greater length of 
time toward the African cause^ to keep those in a state of 
anxiety by whom he thinks he has been brought into coyifiict 
with more lengthy annoyances. ..." 

Luminous words, indeed ; but we must now leave this 
correspondence. Balbus and Oppius were the most in- 
fluential of Cc3esar's intimates now ; Antony apparently 
much less so. — Return we now to the official acts of the 
period after Thapsas, never forgetting that the decrees 
of the senate w^ere really those of Caesar's puppets or 
creatures : even less sovereign were the plebiscita in his 
honor. 

A period of forty days' Thanksgiving was decreed when 
the news of Thapsus arrived. Caesar was made prcefectus 
morum (virtually Censor) for three years. To him it 
was given to sit on the sella curulis amid the consuls. He 
was to give the signal in the circus. He was to be dicta- 
tor for ten years. His statue was to be placed on the 
capitol opposite to that of Jupiter himself. (Dio, 43, 14.) 
All this, says Dio, because they still feared a second Sulla. 
There were proposed also other honors, which, however, 



234 ANNALS OF CiESAR * 

Csesar declined. These S. C. were all adopted before he 
himself arrived in Rome. (Dio, 43, 15.) His keen 
eyes saw that fear, rather than affection, had dictated 
these honors, and in an address before the senate he 
sought to assure the assembled fathers. His previous 
course of moderation, he urged, had been sincere, nor 
would he now use his power to gratify whim or vin- 
dictiveness. His previous career had been determined 
by his very nature, not by craft or policy. He de- 
sired to lead, not to play the autocrat. (Dio, 43, 7.) 
The private papers of Pompey and Scipio he had 
burned without reading them. Troops were for secu- 
rity both of empire and of private property, not to be 
tools of tyranny. 

The triumph, long looked for by the masses of the cap- 
ital, was a fourfold one, being celebrated on four different 
days, but not successive ones, a necessity quite obvious to 
us. These gigantic parades and processions ^ occurred in 
the month of August (really June), in a sequence of his- 
torical order. First came the triumph over the Gauls, 
then that from Egypt, next the one which glorified his 
swift defeat of Pharnaces, lastly that over Juba. The 
censure of the appearance of the Egyptian princess Ar- 
sinoe, as noted by Dio (43, 19), may have been due to 
Caesar's political critics rather than to the general voice 
of the capital ; this, too, may be said of the displeasure at 
the great number of lictors. On this occasion Vercin- 
getorix perished in prison, in which he had awaited this 
exhibition as well as his most shameful and unjust exe- 
cution for six long years. Most justly does the French 
nation honor his memory. The curious license of the 
troops — comparable to that customary at the season of 
the Saturnalia — on this occasion, taunted him with his 
passion for Cleopatra, nay, designated his entire gigantic 

1 Suet., "Cses.," 37 ; Velleius, 2, 56, declamatory and inexact. Dio, 
43, 19 ; Plut., "Caes.," 55 ; Appian, "B. C," 2, 101-102. 



CiESAR IN 46 B.C. 235 

achievement as the success of unrighteousness.^ This 
was the first time since Tarquin's days that this term, 
king, was heard in Rome as applied to a sovereign com- 
mander. 

^The plehs were feasted at 22,000 tables, at one sitting, 
no second table for any one. Shows and games were of 
unheard of splendor. Appian records that the treasure 
carried in parade amounted to 65,000 talents, while 2822 
golden wreaths also were borne along, such as had been 
given to Csesar by communities and by princes. Each 
common legionary also received the equivalent of 5000 
drachmas of Attic money (1900), while the centurions, 
the very prop of Caesar's achieved sovereignty, received 
the twofold amount. A matter of doubtful political wis- 
dom was what Appian relates. There were carried in 
procession twenty-two large canvasses, with portraits and 
death scenes of leading Pompeians. Pompey himself 
alone was exempted. It was brutal, and no worship of 
genius can gloss it over. Perhaps in this manner the 
dictator would exhibit to the Mediterranean world his 
positive victory, and discourage any risings in favor of a 
cause whose history seemed to be over. Among important 
legislative acts of the new sovereign were these : The 
lowest class of the three classes of jurors provided by 
the Aurelian law of 70 B.C. was discontinued. A special 
enumeration was taken in Rome, about which there have 
been various conjectures. Was it to determine the ques- 
tion of the recession of the population? Probably it was 
due to fiscal necessities, and a more exact determination of 
the number of those who were recipients of grain from the 
public granaries, was intended. The facts of the financial 
administration must have pressed to the forefront of his 
concerns at a time when the consummation of the parades 

1 Restored by L. Lange, 3, 446, thus, the marching rhythm being 
quite palpable : 

Pl^cterfs si r^cte fdcies, sf non f&cies, r^x erls. 



236 ANNALS OF CiESAR 

and donatives had swallowed enormous sums.^ Also there 
was a sumptuary law, dealing witli luxury of the table, of 
which law Cicero makes some light fun. (''Fam.," 7, 62, 
2.) There was also limitation in the use of litters (Suet., 
" C," 43), purple rugs, pearls ; special agents were placed 
on the public markets to watch for contravention of the 
sumptuary laws. Csesar was indeed prcefectus morum, but 
about this time the radiant Cleopatra appeared in Rome, 
and at once took possession of the establishment which 
Caesar had provided for her, in his park on the right bank 
of the Tiber. (Dio, 43, 27.) — Proconsular provinces 
were now limited to two years, there now being a central 
sovereign in the empire — and proprsetorian to one. (Dio, 
43, 25.) 

Finally the confusion and disorder of the civil calendar 
was terminated in this way, that the civil year was 
brought to conform definitely and perpetually to the 
solar year. As Censorinus ( " De Die Natali," c. 20) ex- 
plains, this often recurrent trouble had been due to the 
habit of arbitrary actions on the part of the pontifices. 
These, from hatred or from favor, gave to certain magis- 
trates longer or shorter years, or they inflicted loss, or 
bestowed benefits upon certain financiers who had con- 
tracts with the state. Csesar, as pontifex maximus, re- 
formed all this, first, by making an intercalation of 
twenty-three days at the end of February, and besides, 
after November was over, inserting an extra period of 
sixty-seven days before December was to begin. Thus 
this year, 46 B.C., came to have, in all, four hundred and 
forty-five days. He also abolished forever the so-called 
" Mercedonius," the intercalary period, after February, in 
alternate years, and provided one intercalary day, at the 

1 Appian says (2, 102), that it was a counting of the plebs. Plutarch 
(c. 55), who evidently does not understand it at all, says that the last cen- 
sus gave 320,000, this one but 150,000. Cicero's phrase of the ' misera ple- 
becula, hirudo cerarii,^ here becomes more palpable to our comprehension. 



C^SAR IN 46 B.C. 237 

end of February, once in four years. Experts say that 
Caesar went back to Numa as much as possible. 



But the troubles in Spain called the dictator away from 
these necessary and urgent labors. Once more he took 
the field, and for the last time, chiefly to regain southern 
Spain, lost to him through the rapacity and injustice of his 
henchman, Q. Cassius Longinus. It was probably during 
the intercalary period that he left Rome and Cleopatra. 
The matter was notorious and was sharply censured. 
But he was unconcerned and had even passed a S. C, 
granting to her the title of ' Friend and Ally of the 
Roman People.' At one time Caesar had thought that 
the operations in Spain might be conducted by one of his 
lieutenants, but a fuller understanding of the exact situa- 
tion urged him to take the field in person. 

Pompey's oldest son and heir, Gneius, had first gained 
the Balearic isles, where for a while he had been detained 
by sickness. Thence Scapula and Aponius, Roman 
knights of Corduba, summoned the young pretender over 
to the mainland. 

Many of the old Afranians, seasoned men, came to his 
eagles. (Dio, 43, 30.) Sextus Varus also, and Labienus, 
having escaped after Thapsus, came over from Africa. 
The adversaries of Caesar wisely determined to concen- 
trate themselves in Baetica. 

On Nov. 26, 46 B.C., early in the morning, Cicero had 
called on Caesar. (" Fam.," 6, 14.) Not so very long 
afterwards, it seems, Caesar departed for the seat of war. 
Both Appian and even Strabo state that the dictator, now 
in the fourth year of that power, traversed the distance 
from Rome to Ohulco (in Bietica) in twenty-seven days. 
According to Strabo (3, 160) this place was three hundred 
stadia or thirty-seven English miles from Corduba. For 
not all the communities of Baetica had opened their gates 



238 ANNALS OF CJESAR 

to the young pretender. Even in Corduba a part of the 
population still adhered to Csesar, and evidently many 
communities vs^ere similarly broken up into two factions, 
although the Pompeians, for the time being, seem to have 
had control of affairs. Some towns, like Ulia^ were still 
holding out for Csesar. Sextius Pompey himself had 
command in Corduba, the capital of the province. 

At Rome men like Cicero did not know whether Csesar, 
before leaving, had nominated candidates, or would do 
so in Spain. ("Att.," 12, 8.) Balbus and Oppius, not 
Antony, were his stewards at the seat of government. 



CHAPTER XXI 

THE LAST YEAR BUT ONE, 45 B.C. 

This, too, was a winter campaign, as had been that 
ending with Thapsus. The hardships of the inclement 
season were thus added to the steadily rising bitterness of 
the Civil War. Csesar was deceived in his expectation 
that young Pompey would be utterly dazed by the dicta- 
tor's personal appearance on the theatre of war. (Dio, 43, 
32.) 

The essential point in this last and most desperate cam- 
paign of Caesar was this : his antagonists held, and were 
justified by the events in their conviction, that, man for 
man, the legionaries on both sides differed but little from 
one another. Even at Rome there seems to have pre- 
vailed during this winter 46-45 a perfectly clear vision of 
that critical equilibrium in southern Spain. In January- 
February, 45, Cicero wrote to A. Torquatus, who then 
was still in exile ('' Fam.," 6, 4, 1) : " Now we (here at 
Rome) merely seem to understand so much, that the war 
will not last long, but on this very subject others think 
otherwise. . . . On the one hand, there is the common 
chance of every war, and the results of battles are always 
uncertain ; on the other hand, at the present time, it is 
said, so large are the forces on both sides, so well equipped 
to fight a decisive battle, that, no matter which of the two 
shall gain the victory, no marvellous result ^ will come 
about. That idea of the public is gaining more strength 
from day to day, that, though there be some difference 
between the causes represented in the field, nevertheless, 

1 Evidently he means no real restoration of the older form of govern- 
ment. 

239 



240 ANNALS OF CAESAR 

there is not going to be much difference between the vic- 
tories. One side (z.e., Csesar's) we almost know by ex- 
perience. As to the other one (Gneius Pompey), there is 
no one but reflects how greatly to be feared is an armed 
victory of his, in his anger." On this latter contingency 
we have a curious confirmation from C. Cassius, then 
praetor designate, who wrote to Cicero about this time 
from Brundisium. ("Fam.," 15, 9, 4.) "I will stake 
my life if I am not anxious, and prefer to have the old and 
gentle ynaster ^ rather than make a test of a new and cruel 
one. You know how much of an idiot Gneius is, you 
know how he confounds cruelty with valor ; you know 
how he thinks we always make him a laughing-stock. . . . 
If Ctesar has won, expect me speedily." So wrote one 
who, about twelve months later, organized the plot of 
assassinating the one man whose mastership he was will- 
ing, nay, anxious, to live under, when there was a possible 
alternative of a government controlled by young Pompey. 
Caesar's chief task, in the first part of this campaign, 
naturally was to capture Corduba. This, however, proved 
more difficult an enterprise than Caesar had expected. So 
Caesar turned away, and on February 19 captured a minor 
stronghold, Ategua. Meanwhile, young Pompey, within 
the sphere of his own domination, began to winnow Pom- 
peians from Caesareans, in given town communities ("Bell. 
Hisp.," 20), and on one occasion gave orders to behead 
seventy-four persons, non-combatants, who were said to 
have favored Caesar. (lb., 21, 3.) What would the young 
pretender have done at Rome if he had entered it with a 
victorious army? How completely correct was the judg- 
ment of Cassius I In fact, in the Baetica a reign of terror, 
here and there, was begun by Pompey's adherents. That 
young leader in his manifestoes bore himself as one of 
whom Caesar was afraid ^ (ib., 26): Caesar, he claimed, 

1 Veterem et clementem dominum. 

2 Cf. Appian, "B. C," 2, 104. 



THE LAST YEAR BUT ONE 241 

did not dare to give him battle because his troops were 
raw recruits. 

Gradually, whether through Ciesar's initiative or that 
of Pompey, both armies manoeuvred southward towards 
the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. Pompey now, with 
the town of Munda at his back, offered battle to Ccesar 
(ib., 29). It was March 17, anniversary of the Lihera- 
lia at Rome, with a cloudless sky and brilliant sunshine. 
The lines of Csesar's foes exhibited thirteen eagles and 
legions, while Caesar commanded eight legions, with eight 
thousand troopers. Legion X held its ancient place of 
honor, the right wing, and the Pompeians placed an extra 
legion in reserve against the far-famed decumani. The 
author of the Bellum Hispaniense either was too partisan 
to give a plain and unvarnished account of this formidable 
struggle (c. 30-31), or his inferior position precluded any 
clear grasp of the long and bitter contest. Very different 
is the account which we gain from every other source. 
Csesar did not march up the hill, but assumed at first a 
defensive or waiting attitude. As for the Pompeians, so 
impatient was their spirit, and so prompt their charge, 
that Csesar, as Asinius Pollio attests, did not even have 
time to utter the wonted appeal to his troops. (Suet., 
" Cses.," b^.^ Asinius, then, was on that field: his ac- 
count (Historise) must have been the most authoritative 
for the later historians, and the spirit with which he com- 
posed his final and deliberate account, as we are acquainted 
with his keen and brusquely independent character, was 
far from blind adulation of the man to whom he at first 
owed his unparalleled advancement. Briefly, this was 
a struggle without any parallel in Ciesar's military ex- 
perience. ^ There were auxiliaries on both sides, sent by 
both the hostile rulers of Mauretania, but the legionaries 
alone (Dio, 43, 36) determined the day of Munda. The 

1 riorus, 2, 78 sqq., probably gives us the Livian relation. Cf. Plut, 
"Cses.," 56. 



242 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

Csesarean veterans hoped for a definite rest henceforward. 
The old Afranian and Varronian cohorts looked for no par- 
don if Csesar should win the battle. It was all more stern 
and desperate than three years before in Thessaly. And 
there was a curious stillness in all the bloody work. The 
combatants, apart from the clink and clang of blades on 
shields, the mere athleticism of many thousands of duels 
of desperate swordsmanship, maintained a rare silence as 
to cheering or battle-cry : neither exultation nor groans 
were heard. They simply stood to it : an occasional shout 
of ' strike ! ' ' kill ! ' a deadlock it seemed to the command- 
ers. As the day wore on, there seemed no palpable im- 
pression to be making on either side. According to Livy 
(Florus, 2, 81), at one time there was actually a recession 
or a slow falling back of Csesar's troops. ' They had not 
yet actually fled,' says the epitomizer of Livy, but it was 
clear that they were resisting more from a sense of shame 
than from valor. Csesar leaped from his horse and ran 
down from the elevated place whence he had been survey- 
ing the battle. In fact, each commander, by a similar 
impulse, strove to add the weight of his own personal 
exposure and fighting to the scales in which reposed the 
issue of that unyielding struggle. Personally, then, Cse- 
sar rushed through the lines,^ crying out aloud, " Are you 
not ashamed to deliver me to the young boys?" viz., to 
the sons of Pompey. At one time he said to the sub- 
commanders about him, ''This will be the end of my life 
and of your campaigns." (App., "B. C," 2, 104.) And 
even Csesar's personal valor, the last resource of a great 
commander, might have proved unavailing, the night ter- 
minating the grim battle, had not a critical blunder of 
Labienus presented the decision to the eagles of his com- 
mander and lavish friend. Bogud, the Moorish ally of 
the dictator, got into motion to attack the stockade of 

1 This trait in Plutarch (" Cses.," 56) probably dates back to Asinius. 
The close agreement between Dio and Florus (Livy) is impressive. 



THE LAST YEAR BUT ONE 243 

young Pompey, and when Labienus saw this, he left that 
line of steel to attack the Mauretanian. Speedily the idea 
spread that the Pompeian line was yielding at last. Doubt 
turned to apprehension, apprehension to fear, and fear to 
panic. Some fled to the stockade, some to Munda. Sally 
after sally was made from the stockade, until all the de- 
fenders had perished. As for Munda, Caesar immediately 
ordered a circumvallation, where the bodies of the slain 
were piled up to furnish a rampart of investment. This is 
noted by nearly all the ancient historians, from the writer 
of the Bellum Hispaniense downward. The dictator's 
great-nephew came to Spain about this time ; this youth, 
Octavius by name, was then in his eighteenth year. Csesar 
was thinking of a successor in his dynasty. (Dio, 43, 41.) 
Soon afterwards the heads of the leaders were brought in. 

The official news reached Rome rather slowly, viz., in 
thirty-four days, so that April 20 (ordinarily the anniver- 
sary of the founding of Rome, the Parilid)^ w^as the day on 
which began the fifty days' suppUcatio. The Civil War 
had thus lasted somewhat more than four years. 

Cicero had had pleasant relations to Caesar's private 
stewards and agents, Balbus and Oppius. He had inter- 
ceded for a number of exiles. It was praiseworthy in him 
to cheer them and seek their rehabilitation of name and 
fortune. In these tasks he was earnest and generous, for 
he could not well look forward to any material or worldly 
reward. But his underlying view of things was melan- 
choly : " When most blessed are those who have begotten 
no children, and less miserable those who lost children in 
these times, than if they had lost them under a good gov- 
ernment, or, to come down to actual facts, under some 
kind of government at all." ("Fam.," 5, 16, 3.) 

In Cicero's vision the very organic parts ^ of the state 
had been ruined. After Munda he declared himself indif- 
ferent as to the fate of Pompey's sons. (" Att.," 12, 37, 4.) 
1 Membra rei publicae ("Fam.," 5, 13, 3). 



244 ANNALS OF CESAR 

In these months of spring, 45 B.C., he was somewhat 
concerned as to the manner of Caesar's rejoinder to him- 
self, the Anticato. So busy was Csesar, that Hirtius for 
him gathered some outline of data which entered into 
Csesar's work. (" Att.," 12, 41, 4.) 

Long before Caesar in person returned to Rome, the 
rapid production of S. C. in his honor was resumed. 
A curious and puzzling process : for it seems that the 
deepest and bitterest enemies of Csesar had some hand in 
more than one of these, in order to render the autocrat 
odious by the very process of ever new accumulation. 

Balbus we may call his minister for home affairs, and we 
may say confidently that in Ctesar's absence no important 
S. C. was, or could be, passed without him. Some positive 
measure of responsibility must rest upon the Spaniard, 
responsibility too for the catastrophe of the Ides of 
March. 

About a Parthian campaign Csesar wrote even from 
Spain. This was a bitter legacy of his fellow dynast 
Crassus, and one of the results of the conference at Luca 
eleven years before, but a task not to be ignored, if the 
eastern provinces once more were to be made permanently 
secure. The next great enterprise, then, a foreign war of 
grave importance and great cost, was held out and named 
for public opinion, even before the autocrat returned from 
Corduba and Gades. But, he added, there must first be a 
settlement of the government. Clearly he had taken to 
heart the wretched condition of the capital such as it was 
during his sojourn at Alexandria and beyond. Other- 
wise, it seems, he would hardly have stopped even at 
Rome on his way to the East. 

But we must turn once more to the further Honors^ 

senatus consulta antedating Caesar's return. Not long 

before July 20-21, 45 B.C., there was passed a S. C. or 

plebiscitum, providing ^ that at the opening of Circensian 

1 Dio, 43, 45. 



THE LAST YEAR BUT ONE 245 

games, among the figures of the gods of the common- 
wealth conveyed in solemn procession^ in chariots, the 
figure of Csesar also should be so driven along in a 
separate chariot. 

Even then, too, there was a rumored proposal of Cotta's, 
that in deference to a certain Sib3dline oracle, Csesar 
should be formally invested with the title of king be- 
fore setting out for the Parthian War. (Cf. Cic, " De 
Divinatione," 2, 110.) Cicero notes all this as rife in the 
capital even before Caesar's return from Spain. 

Csesar's intimate political supporters, such as Lepidus, 
looked for Caesar to appear in the senate by August 1. But 
he did not then. For the first time it seems in all his 
correspondence the orator cites the ominous, and to the 
Roman feeling intolerable, word Rex in referring to Ctesar. 
Cicero's blackguard nephew Quintus had done his best to 
poison CtGsar's mind against his uncle. The youth's talk 
ran in this manner : Caesar would have to be on his guard 
against Cicero, " did not the king know that Cicero was 
utterly devoid of spirit." ('' Att.," 13, 37, 2.) Plots, then, 
or the possibility of plots directed against the life of the 
dictator, were mentioned at least, in this summer, in the 
environment of the latter, and, no doubt too, often by per- 
sons who thus sought to curry favor with the great man. 
— The aureole of a certain majesty steadily began to illu- 
mine the laurel wreath of the nascent emperor, and Cicero 
preferred in that summer to submit first, to Oppius and 
Balbus, a letter which he was about to sent to Caesar. It 
was indeed, in a way, very much of a political letter, for 
it contained Cicero's opinion of Caesar's Antieato. (Aug. 
22, "Att.,"13, 50.) 

On Sept. 13 Caesar at last arrived at a villa of his 

at Labicum (not far from Praeneste). On the same day 

he made his will, which document, for safe-keeping, was 

entrusted to the foremost of the Vestal Virgins. (Suet., 

iPompa (Cic, "Att.," 13, 44, 1). 



246 ANNALS OF CESAR 

"Caes.," 83.) It was a political mistake for Csesar to 
hold a triumph on account of his Spanish campaign. This, 
indeed, had been a civil war pure and simple. But while 
this was censured at Rome, Csesar was dangerously indif- 
ferent to these judgments. He had forged a kind of mon- 
archy ; at least he was the monarch. In the enormous 
expansion of what we may call his world-wide power, the 
aristocracy of Rome, once his peers, had, to his political 
vision, shrunk to such pigmy stature, that he did not hesi- 
tate to put Gauls into the senate. The greater part of 
his active life had been spent away from Rome. His will 
was as potent on the banks of the Nile or Rhine or Seine 
as on the Tiber. Rome to him, to his volition and initia- 
tive, was no longer an authority or source of authority. 
It w^as this permeation of his very consciousness with the 
feeling of monarchy which caused him to decline, in this 
last autumn of his life, the bestowal of the consular office 
for ten years, a bauble rather for him, with which to 
gratify his dependents. 

Was it the accumulation of honors exceeding all prece- 
dent, or was it the outraged feeling of those who once 
were his peers, or again, was it really a reassertion of a 
purer and better republicanism which proved the moving 
force and factor of the plot which felled him before he 
could complete his work and his life ? But first we must 
enumerate these honors. (Dio, 43, 43.) 

A S. C. decreed that at all games Csesar was to be dis- 
tinguished by the triumphal garb. The laurel wreath he 
was to wear always and everywhere. 

With this honor he was particularly gratified (Suet., 
45), and his baldness was thus less conspicuous. He was 
at this particular time — for Cleopatra still resided in his 
park — by no means indifferent to these little amenities of 
embellishing his outward person. The high shoes of red 
leather were considered a tradition from the old kings of 
Alba, from whom he claimed descent through lulus. 



THE LAST YEAR BUT ONE 247 

Also on account of Munda he was called Liberator} This 
was recorded in the minutes of the senate, and a temple of 
Freedom was to be built with public money, As other 
Romans had their prcenomen of Gains, Lucius, Titus, Mar- 
cus, etc., so he henceforward, as by a kind of proper 
noun,2 was to be called Imperator^ — the victorious 
commander of the forces, — it became thus a public char- 
acter or quality merged with his person and destined to 
descend to his offspring or succession. It certainly made 
and constituted the first emperor and all later emperors. 
He acquired thus, too, a mansion on the Palatine, it seems, 
so that Atticus became his neighbor. Cicero congratu- 
lates the latter on the rise in value. Cicero, indeed, inti- 
mated to his bosom friend that he would rather see Csesar 
occupying the same temple-sanctuary with Romulus — 
who according to one tradition was torn in pieces by the 
enraged senators — than with the Goddess of Salvation 
(^Salus). (" Att.," 12, 45, 3.) It is an ominous note ; of 
the value of a curse and deepest hatred : the more so as 
Cicero was not admitted to the councils of Brutus and 
Cassius. 

Actually much of what was offered to him was exces- 
sive : 2 that is to say, it was too abrupt and radical a 
breach with the constitutional and social habits of the 
past. Suetonius calls the following honors excessive 
Q nimii ') : the continual consulate, perpetual dictator- 
ship, supervisorship of morals, the praenomen Imperator, 
the cognomen Pater Patrice, the statue among the kings 
of Rome, the raised platform in the orchestra. " But he 
suffered even greater honors than human elevation to be 
decreed to himself : the golden chair in the senate house 

1 Lange does not see why : but clearly terrible times would have burst 
over Rome, if the young pretender had won the Spanish campaign. 

2 &cnrep n K^piov (Dio, 43, 44). 

3 viripoyKa (Dio, 43, 45). He, as Suetonius (76), going on with the 
record of honors, does it in an equal spirit of sharp censure and 
condemnation. 



248 ANNALS OF CESAR 

and on the tribunal, the image in the special chariot in 
the parade in the Circensian games, temples, altars, the 
images for worship (simulacra) among the gods, the 
pulvvnar, or sacred couch, for spreading a feast before a 
god, the flamen^ or special priest, the designation of his 
natal month by his own name, July.'''' 

There are scholars, such as L. Lange, who suggest that 
there was at this time a certain insidious failing of Caesar's 
nerves. It is known that Csesar was subject to fainting 
fits at this time, apart from occasional attacks of epilepsy. 

It is, indeed, quite apart from such weakness, entirely 
probable, that his own experiences with his generation had 
filled him with a certain contempt, first for the average 
Roman in public life, whether of the popular party which 
he had so long used or controlled, or for the oligarchy, 
which he had consistently, from first to last, opposed, de- 
fied, humiliated and defeated ; and further on this con- 
tempt, in his powerful and creative mind, extended to the 
constitutional fabric, of which, indeed, his own achieve- 
ments and career had left but a mere shadow. In the 
mind of the new monarch, indeed, the monarchy was an 
accomplished fact and a mighty reality. This would ex- 
plain utterances recorded by hostile historiographers such 
as T. Ampius Balbus, recorded probably soon after the 
Ides of March : '' The government was nothing, a phrase 
merely, without body or form. Sulla did not know his 
A B C's for resigning the dictatorship. Men ought to 
speak more deliberately with him now and treat as stat- 
utes what he said." Perhaps malice. Sheer invention? 
There is here a great deal of what I might call psychologi- 
cal concinnity. In this last year of his life there is not 
a little in his visible acts, of the meaning of the French 
phrase of absolutism : " Tel est mon plaisir," and " The 
king can do no wrong." So he constrained the Roman 
knight 1 and author of popular comedy to act himself — a 

1 Laberius. 



I 



THE LAST YEAR BUT ONE 249 

matter of keen social humiliation to the Roman spirit — 
at the Games of that last autumn, act in his own come- 
dies of the lower life (Mimus). The noted author him- 
self had penned, and in the prologue himself uttered, 
these grave words : ^ 

" For he to whom the gods themselves could nought refuse, 
To him who could endure that I, mere man, should aught deny?" 

After this, an imperial purse and social public rehabili- 
tation was no adequate compensation for an elderly gentle- 
man of sixty. Cicero witnessed this practical indulgence 
of an imperial whim, but he recorded this novel experience 
as one, for the very enduring of w^iich a veritable harden- 
ing of one's sentiments and habits was necessary. ("Fam.," 
12, 18, 2.) 



In the last December of the dictator's life, we catch a 
rare glimpse of the living Caesar's person and movements. 
Cicero recorded this in a letter to Atticus, of date Decem- 
ber 19. ("Att.," 13, 52.) It was on the northwest 
fringe of the Gulf of Naples, near Puteoli. Ceesar had 
paid a visit to Philippus, the stepfather of young Octavius 
whom he had now adopted, and whom he had sent to 
Apollonia to complete his education under the noted 
rhetor ApoUodorus. Csesar was attended by a veritable 
host, a body of two thousand troops, whose encampment 
was little suited to the parks and grassplots of that New- 
port. It was on December 18 that Caesar sojourned on 
the estate of Philippus, but gave audience to nobody. 
Cicero thinks he went over financial accounts with 
Balbus. Then he took a turn on the beach. After 
2 P.M. a bath ; then he heard of the decease of his former 
chief engineer, Mamurra^: he did not change his mien in 
the slightest degree. Later he anointed himself, and 

1 Macrobius, "Saturn.," 2, 7, 3. 

2 V. Catullus, 29, with Munro's commentary. 



250 ANNALS OF CiESAR 

went to dinner. While at this, Csesar, under a medi- 
cal regimen of periodical emetics, ate and drank quite 
freely, from a rather choice menu. His immediate retinue 
consisted of nine persons. This dinner was at Cicero's 
Piiteolanum. There was nothing serious in the conver- 
sation, ^.e., nothing of state, but merely literary criticism 
and problems of scholarship. For the host of that dinner 
was, indeed, the scholar out of politics. — The soldiers 
Cicero naturally felt to be a nuisance. 



During that autumn, Caesar had provided for the elec- 
tion of sixteen prsetors and forty quaestors : ever more 
places for his supporters. 



CHAPTER XXII 
44 B.C. 

THE LAST MONTHS OF C^SAR's LIFE 

Of the sixteen praetors inaugurated on January 1 on 
the Capitoline hill, the most notable were two men who 
had made their peace with Csesar, one very soon, the 
other not very long after Pharsalos, viz., M. Junius 
Brutus and Gains Cassius Longinus. Brutus and Cassius 
really were the foremost men in the portentous con- 
spiracy. The former was born in 85 B.c.^ His father 
had been an adherent of the Marian party, in that civil 
war, and after Sulla's death supported Lepidus in the 
fatuous rising of 77 B.C., perishing at Rhegium Cisalpine 
by the orders of young Pompey. A sober estimate of 
time and years renders it very improbable that Csesar 
might have been the father of Brutus. 

Servilia, however, marrying Silanus (consul of 62 B.C.), 
was in the critical year 63 B.C., when her son was already 
twenty-two years old, in a relation to Csesar which was 
scandalous and notorious.^ Now this corrupt mother can- 
not have had much influence on her son, who patterned 
rather, and with great perseverance, after his mother's 
half-brother, the great Cato. When the latter, in 58 B.C., 
to remove him from the senate for awhile, was sent to 
Cyprus, to settle that island for the Roman government, 
and make an inventory of the treasure of King Ptolemy, 
Brutus, then twenty-seven years old, accompanied his 
famous uncle. We cannot pursue, in detail, the entire 

1 Drumann, 4, p. 18, sqq. ; W. Teuffel in old Pauly. 

2 Of. alsoCic, "Att.," 2, 24. 

251 



252 ANNALS OF CESAR 

career of Brutus. But in that island, one deep trait of 
his character was revealed : he was very hard, hard as 
granite or steel; particularly was he a very hard and 
relentless creditor. Later he attended his father-in-law, 
Appius Claudius, in the provincial administration of 
Cilicia with Cyprus. He had put out loans there, and 
when Cicero succeeded in 51 B.C. was very importunate 
about collections. Brutus, it seems, had heavy demands 
against the town of Salamis in Cyprus ; and his particular 
strain of Stoicism had not made him squeamish about 
using some troops of cavalry to coerce the Salaminians in 
some way to pay.^ His collecting agent was a certain 
Scaptius. The terms of the contract, it seems, called for 
interest payments at the rate of forty-eight per cent per 
annum. Cicero, as provincial governor, discovered also 
that Brutus had hidden himself behind puppets, and took 
practical steps to curb both the cupidity and the ruthless 
harshness of Brutus. Csesar, after Pharsalos, had treated 
him with almost paternal generosity. The term of ideo- 
logue has been applied to him. When once set in an idea 
or purpose, expediency or circumstances could not move 
him. Hence the famous utterance of Ctesar about this 
trait : ''i It depends a great deal what he wills : but what- 
ever he wills, he wills it strongly." (" Att.," 14, 1, 2.) 
When he had resolved to marry Porcia, Cato's daughter, 
he put away his first wife with cruel abruptness. 

His literary occupations seem to have been handmaids 
to his prevailing drift or purpose. He delved deeply into 
the best authorities of the older republic, such as Polybius 
or some of the annalists : clearly, he strove to gain a 
clearer vision. We have reason to assume that his tem- 
porary conformity to Caesar's imperial government was a 
matter of income, without any cordial acceptance of the 
new order. 

C. Cassius Longinus had acted with consummate cool- 
1 Appius noster turmas aliquot equitum dederat huic Scaptio. 



THE LAST MONTHS OF CESAR'S LIFE 253 

ness in the disastrous campaign of Crassus in Mesopotamia, 
and brought the remnant of the Roman forces safely to 
Syria, which he maintained for the Roman Empire. Tri- 
bunus plebis in 49, probably then less than thirty-five years 
of age. After Pharsalos, in the Hellespont, although in 
command of a powerful fleet, he surrendered to Caesar. 
He was dazed, as it were, by Csesar's preternatural and 
(as the classic world was fond of conceiving such things) 
divine fortune. (App., 2, 88.) 

(To his mind, in the spring of 45 B.C., Caesar was, indeed, 
a gentle master, and Cassius shuddered with despair at the 
idea of the young pretender gaining a decisive victory in 
Spain. It was a bitter disappointment to him that Caesar, 
in allotting the places for 44 B.C., had given the praetor- 
ship of the civil jurisdiction (^prcetura urhana) to Brutus, 
and not to himself. In exploiting the provincials he, too, 
had simply been a typical member of the Roman oligarchy. 
Thus in Rhodes he had carried away all the images of the 
gods but that of Helios, which, indeed, was too colossal. 
(Val. Max. 1, 5, 8.) To him republicanism — if we should 
strain terms and use this good word — was not, indeed, any 
return to the times of Scipio ^milianus, but merely the 
unlimited exploitation by an oligarchy in whose councils 
he had good reason to expect a certain initiative and lead- 
ership. As for the particular followers of Caesar who 
were persuaded to enter the plot against his life, they 
were probabl}^, in the main, place-men, whose loyalty to 
the first emperor was determined by their measure of 
material rewards. Most of them were ingrates. Further- 
more, the prospect of being subjects always was galling 
to their social pride. Perhaps, while most of them were, 
indeed, creatures of Caesar, and raised by him, such as 
Trebonius and Brutus Albinus, they had come to look 
upon Caesar and the fabric of his fortunes, to a very 
great extent, as their own achievement and creation. 
Caesar's clear and penetrating intellect could not fail to 



254 ANNALS OF CAESAR 

recognize the fact, that his tremendous social and personal 
elevation must breed him enemies among those who had 
once been merely his peers: not at all, of course, among 
his professional soldiery, or his veterans, or the populace 
at large. 

In those imperial days and months, when even Cicero, 
waiting in an antechamber, had to sit patiently until he 
was summoned into the Presence — in those imperial and 
last times of Caesar's life, the latter himself uttered these 
remarkable words : "Can I doubt but that I am profoundly 
hated, when a Cicero sits and cannot meet me at his ease? 
But if any one is easy} he is the man. Still, I have no 
doubt but that he hates me bitterly." And Caesar was 
right. But the older and prouder aristocracy, no matter 
that they took an official part in the apotheosis of the 
divine fortune of the great lulius, they, indeed, were not 
easy in the innermost recesses of their ancestral pride. 
When, on the very last day of 45 B.C., one of the consuls 
had died, and Caesar had appointed Caninius consul (suf- 
fectus) for a fraction of twenty-four hours, it was felt as 
an act of wanton mockery. ^ Nobody, indeed, ate luncheon 
in that consulate. A jestful phrase of Cicero's : he says 
so. But he adds that tears, bitter tears, are much nearer 
to his prevailing mood. And this, too, with all the sub- 
stantial aid of incessant philosophical reading and pro- 
duction, when he deliberately trained himself to forget 
himself, the mere individual, among larger and nobler 
vistas directed and leading to the greater and more im- 
perishable concerns of mankind. How deep and bitter, 
then, was the prevailing discontent of the others whose 
summum honum was placed on a level so much lower? 

The dictator, I say, who read characters and moods 
beyond any man of his time, was certainly aware of these 
psychological and moral facts, and still he dispensed with 

1 Facilis: readily won by kindness (" Att.," 14, 1, 2). 

2 Cicero, "Fam.," 7,39. 



THE LAST MONTHS OF CiESAR'S LIFE 255 

anything that could be called a bodyguard. The temple 
to Clemency^ reared in his honor (Plut., "C," 57), was 
not an unmeaning thing. He would not be a new tyrant 
of Syracuse, always awaiting the assassin. " Better to die 
once for all," he said at a dinner, in the last times, in the 
house of Lepidus, "than always to expect" (scil., the 
assassin, Plut., " Cses.," 57). 

Caesar's achieved power was, indeed, %ui generic ; he was, 
indeed, Csesar, not king. On Jan. 26, 44 B.C., some forty- 
eight days before his death, he rode into the city from 
the ritual of the Ferice Latince^ in a formal manner, as pre- 
scribed. Some in the crowd acclaimed him as 'king' 
. . . but he said quite truly : " I am Csesar, not king," 
I.e., I have myself organized and achieved a power and a 
sum of functions centred in my will, such as has no 
genuine parallel in that trite and ancient term. 

Some one placed regal emblems on a public statue of 
the dictator. His censure first, and ruthless severity 
later, in dealing with two tribunes who tried to inhibit 
this monarchial cult, was a powerful element for the plot- 
ters against his life. The alternative of motive for this 
dangerous action of Caesar, as Suetonius relates it, is 
memorable with all its brevity : " Grieving (or bitterly 
disappointed) either that the mention of kingship had 
been started rather unluckily, or, as his utterances went, 
that the glory of declining had been wrested from him." 

Dio (44, 9) here sees the deep plotting of Caesar's ene- 
mies : " But Caesar was made an object of calumny for 
this also, because, when he should have hated the men 
who applied to him the appellation of hing^ he let them 
go, but made charges against the tribunes." 

The other incident, of which very much was made at the 
time, was this (Dio, 44, 8) : He was sitting in the fore- 
court of the temple of Venus ^ (Genetrix?). A large 

1 Livy, 116, gives this locality, also ; but Appian, 2, 107 and Plut., 60, 
place the scene of this affront on the Bostra. 



256 . ANNALS OF CESAR 

body of senators approached him there to report to him 
some decree in his honor : for, says Dio, " they were wont 
to transact such business in his absence, so as not to ap- 
pear to do it under constraint, but of their own free will." 
Now Ciesar did not rise when they came into his pres- 
ence. This roused their anger, and proved to be one of 
the strongest outward causes for the forming of the plot 
against his life. His clever friends afterwards excused him 
on the score of some momentary indisposition. He himself, 
later, alleged his proneness to epilepsy. But that was not 
the truth, but, when he wished to rise, Balbus restrained 
him with audible utterance — Balbus, ordinarily so tact- 
ful and diplomatic. Whoever first penned this specific 
incident concerning him whom we may call the first em- 
peror's most intimate confidant loved not Balbus. Per- 
haps Pollio recorded it. Or was it Tanusius, or Ampins? 



'In these last months and weeks there is at least one 
occurrence, which is fixed with absolute certainty and 
definiteness. This is the curious incident of February 15, 
which was deliberately set, we may say, in connection 
with the ancient holiday of the Luperealia. It was a test 
of popular feeling as to Ccesar's assumption of the diadem. 
Of this event we have a record written in the same year, 
viz. : Cicero's 2d Philippic, 84, composed in the autumn, 
after September 18. Csesar sat at the Rostra on his gilded 
armchair, garbed in purple toga, with his laurel wreath. 
When Antony, with hardly decorous appearance, almost 
stripped, as chief of that ritual brotherhood, held out the 
diadem to Csesar, there was a groan among the assembled 
myriads. Whenever Antony went through the dumb show 
of crowning Ctesar with it, there was positive wailing. 
Antony even prostrated himself before Caesar to make 
him withdraw his refusal, whereas Ciesar's repeated and 
ultimate rejection was attended with thunders of applause. 



THE LAST MONTHS OF CESAR'S LIFE 257 

But Cicero wrote as the bitterest of partisans, and not 
least so because he was an immeasurably interested con- 
temporary and political witness of these events. 

In the next extant writer, Nicolaus of Damascus,^ who 
flourished with the younger Augustus, with Antony and 
Cleopatra, and was pretty closely related to all of them, 
we have a somewhat different account. It was Licinius 
who first apjDroached with a diadem around which laurel 
had been wound. A tribune ? He was carried '' by his 
fellow-magistrates." He lays the diadem at Csesar's feet. 
Encouraged by the loud shouts of the populace, he puts it 
on Cc^sar's head. The latter beckons to Lepidus, his 
Master of the Horse, to put Licinius away. Lepidus 
hesitates (very naturally so, indeed). At this point, 
C. Cassius Longinus suddenly comes forward and lays the 
diadem on Caesar's knees. With him was P. Casca. AVhen 
Csesar pushed it away and the people shouted, then An- 
tony, anointed and in the slender garb of the Luperci, 
quickly, as though by a sudden impulse, left his place in 
the line of the fraternity and put the diadem on Csesar's 
head. The dictator flung it among the crowd. When 
Antony put it on again, the populace shouted : " Salve 
Rex ! " But Caesar refused, and in the end ordered this 
diadem to be deposited in the temple of Jupiter Capito- 
linus. The sentiments of the spectators were divided, 
nor was there any unanimity in the interpretation of 
motives and significance. So far Nicolaus. 

[Livy, 116, recorded it as one of the causes of Caesar's assassination. 
Florus, 2, 91 : dubium an ipso volente. Velleius (2, 56) makes Antony- 
alone responsible, but intimates that Caesar rather gently had rejected it 
before Antony acted. Plutarch (c. 61) says that Antony brought the 
diadem upon the forum. Plutarch considers it an experiment with nega- 
tive results. Suetonius is almost heated when writing about it. He, 
a grammaticus of long service, seems to have yielded himself to the 
animus of Cicero (c. 79). Appian (2, 109) regards the diadem incident 

1 Born about 64 ; one year older than Augustus. Miiller, "Fragm. 
Historicorum Grsecorum," 3, p. 441. 
s 



258 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

merely as one, following a number of previous tests. Otherwise his 
relation corresponds to Cicero, and, we may assume, to Livy. Similar is 
i)^■o's account (44, 11), who probes for motives, as always, with relent- 
less assertion.] 

'As for the assassination itself, it was set four days 
before Ciesar's proposed departure for the East and the 
Parthian campaign. The latter project impresses me as 
too much neglected by historical writers. This, as I 
intimated before, was a legacy of Crassus. Neither the 
empire and its eastern frontier nor the emperor could 
ignore this discomfiture and disgrace of the Roman name. 
Even in the Munda campaign this had been firmly set 
down on the programme of the immediate future. The 
incessant efforts to establish the diadem somehow, these 
tentative efforts had for their scope this important cam- 
paign. For any considerable sojourn in Mesopotamia the 
diadem would be eminently fit, nay, almost a requisite. 
It was this campaign which offered food for the gossips 
who strove to create trouble for Csesar from all his acts 
and from all his projects. A new capital did the tower- 
ing Julius plan : some said it was Alexandria in Egypt, 
which admirably permitted the introduction, ever odious, 
of Cleopatra's name. She was still sojourning in Caesar's 
park beyond the Tiber. Others said it was Ilium, for 
^neas came from Troy. Such projects saddled on Caesar 
were meant to undermine his popularity with the humbler 
folk of the forum and of the shops. The senate, too, was 
to meet on March 15, four days only, let us repeat it, 
before Csesar's planned departure for Mesopotamia. The 
meeting in the main was to deal with Parthian concerns. 

Calpurnia's visions and apprehensions, the monitions of 
the Etruscan haruspex Spurinna, and so many other things 
deeply interesting to Livy and to Livy's readers, prodi- 
gia and ostenta, we will put them aside. For most of us 
are not pagans, none of us are Romans. The accomplices 
had waited long for him there in the portico connected 



THE LAST MONTHS OF CAESAR'S LIFE 259 

with Pompey's theatre. Finally they sent one of his old- 
time lieutenants, Brutus Albinus, to urge him to come to 
the session which, after all, he himself had appointed, to 
come indeed, and not be swayed by the futilities of dreams 
and Etruscan lore. It had been discussed, also, that in 
Rome and Italy, Caesar should bear the power and title of 
dictator, but in all the provinces he was to be hing. 

The senators in the plot had been in that portico from 
daybreak, but it was eleven o'clock before Ciesar finally 
resolved to go. He was carried the short distance from 
the pontifical palace to Pompey's theatre in a litter. Be- 
fore he began the session — for he was both dictator and 
consul — the customary sacrifices were unfavorable for 
doing public business on that day. Suetonius (Livy?) 
says that he entered the senatorial assembly as one who 
had spurned the Roman ritual. That which was then 
uppermost in his mind^ was the Parthian campaign. As 
to that which followed, there is more or less detail in the 
various writers, of whom Nicolaus of Damascus was the 
nearest to the events of those historians whose account of 
the tragedy we possess with fair completeness : nor does 
Suetonius, Plutarch, Appian, Dio, contradict one another 
in any substantial detail whatsoever, except in the one 
thing, that Nicolaus has him walk to the meeting. As he 
entered, all rose in his honor. Mark Antony, whose her- 
culean strength and physical courage were known to all, 
was detained outside in conversation with his old fellow- 
campaigner, Trebonius.2 Some of the more practical 
among the plotters had suggested that Lepidus, too, as 
well as Antony, be stricken down at the same time ; but 
Brutus, the ideologue, had vigorously opposed this. " If 
we simply remove the tyrant alone," said he, "our act will 
gain universal acceptance. The mechanism of the repub- 

1 Says Floras, 2, 94, the epitomizer of Livy. 

2 Cicero's efforts in his 2d " Phil.," to charge Antony with disloyalty to 
Caesar, are very small business. 



260 ANNALS OF CiESAR 

lican government will automatically resume its ancient 
movement. But if we slay any of Caesar's followers, then 
we will appear, not as patriots, but merely as partisans 
of the Pompeian party." — Lepidus was at that time in 
his suburban villa. The golden throne was not there on 
that day ; as they had waited so long in vain, an attend- 
ant had removed it on that forenoon. Also there were 
some gladiators close at hand, subject to the call of some 
of the conspirators. Of these the highest number given 
is some eighty. It is said that Cassius, otherw^ise a fol- 
lower of Epicurus, glanced up at the statue of Pompey 
and invoked his spirit. The plotters began to group 
themselves for their detestable and perfidious task. Bru- 
tus and certain others moved toward the rear of Caesar's 
chair. At the same time, Tillius Cimber approached 
Caesar directly ; his quest was a petition that his brother 
might be permitted to return from exile. Him accompa- 
nied other senators under guise of supporting his petition, 
all gradually moving up quite closely to Caesar's chair. 
They had been very anxious, for Caesar on entering had, 
for a long time, conversed privately with Popilius Lsenas, 
an accomplice in the plot. They had brought with them 
small poniards (Dio, 44, 16) concealed in the little oblong 
boxes in which they were wont to carry the stilus for tak- 
ing notes in their pugillaria^ or wax tablets. There was 
no guard at all. Now Caesar, on this important day, 
would not discuss personal matters, affable and gracious 
as he ordinarily was. Therefore Cimber, as though urg- 
ing his suit, took hold of Caesar's purple. This was the 
signal agreed upon to begin the dastardly deed. The first 
blow was a downward stroke by Casca, dealt from behind, 
proving not serious. Caesar grasped Casca's arm and 
stabbed it with his own stilus. At the same time Caesar 
said in Latin (Pint., ''Caes.," OtQ): "You villain, Casca, 
what are you doing ? " At this moment another one of 
these splendid heroes stabbed him in the side ; Cassius 



THE LAST MONTHS OF CAESAR'S LIFE 261 

found his face, Brutus his thigh. It is said that when he 
saw that Brutus, whom he had loaded with generosity, 
was among those who sought his life, he abandoned all 
further resistance, wrapped himself in his purple, and died, 
sinking at the foot of Pompey's statue. The physician, 
Antistius, counted twenty-three punctures and slashes, 
only one of which, he thought, was fatal. 

Cicero had not been admitted into this plot, because 
they distrusted his firmness and composure. And for this 
fault we may cite his own testimony from a letter written 
on Nov. 26, 46 B.C. ("Fam.," 6, 14): "For if any one is 
apprehensive in great and dangerous affairs, and always 
more fearful of untoward results than hoping for pros- 
perous outcome, I am that man." The closer our vision 
of the actual state and substratum of the Roman govern- 
ment of that time, the less may we applaud the deed. 

They had slain the monarch, also had they removed the 
foremost statesman from the helm of affairs, but they had 
not slain monarchy. Besides, a city-republic cannot long 
have and hold a great empire when the military arm has 
passed to professional soldiers, mercenaries, not citizens in 
arms. 

Cicero, indeed, as soon as he heard of the tremendous 
event ("Fam.," 6, 15), was in an ecstasy of elation, but 
not for many days. Not long, and it was clear that the 
populace of Rome was eager to rend any of the slayers 
they might meet on the streets of Rome. The soldiers, of 
course, were even more aroused. The slayers simply were 
backed by no physical force or armed support at all. 
Cicero himself was anxious to go abroad on a roving 
commission. He anticipated the possibility of banishment 
less than forty-eight hours after the deed. ("Fam.," 11, 
1, 2.) The oligarchy had done the deed ; really several 
cliques within the oligarchy. How utterly they had 
failed to measure public opinion was soon manifest when 
the two most conspicuous accomplices, for sheer self-pres- 



262 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

ervation, forsook the very sight of forum and Palatine 
Hill, and withdrew under guise of special appointments, 
never to see Rome more. Other leaders, men like Deci- 
mus and Trebonius, soon departed for their provinces. 
They were, with the exception perhaps of the stiffnecked 
doctrinaire Brutus, all merely self-seekers, with but slight 
claims to the noble name of patriot. 

On April 7 even Cicero admitted that the confusion and 
disorganization of public affairs was complete. (" Att.," 
14, 1.) Who, indeed, could accomplish that which Caesar's 
genius as yet had failed to accomplish ? There were 
those who expected a rising of Gaul within twenty days. 
Cicero was dumfounded to find that, whereas what he 
called freedom had been recovered, there was no sort of 
restoration of the old governmental machinery and politi- 
cal order. ("Att.," 14, 4.) 



CHAPTER XXIII 

THE WRITINGS OF C^SAR 

Of his erotic verse, fortunately for his genuine admirers, 
nothing is left.^ As a boy or youth he wrote " Praises of 
Hercules " ; a tragedy, " GEdipus " : versification which 
simply marked scholastic proficiency of his early youth. 
His adopted son, Augustus Caesar, for good reasons, as I 
noted before, forbade his librarian permitting any one to 
make copies of Caesar's verse. Evidently Augustus felt 
that such would not add to Caesar's reputation. (Suet., 
6, 56.) 

Next we mu-st take up once more his published speeches 
in the case against Dolabella, the very year of which has 
been a subject of controversy.^ 

The crabbed interests of Gellius (4, 16, 7) have pre- 
served a mere shred of phrase. It was, however, a great 
case, in which young Caesar measured himself with the 
protagonists of the SuUanian aristocracy, his uncle Gains 
Aurelius Cotta and the brilliant Hortensius. Though he 
did not gain the verdict of the jury, his work, which he 
caused to be published, made an excellent impression, 
Suetonius, an expert in literature, said that young Caesar, 
with this case, had gained a place in the front rank of 
pleaders. And a desire to excel in composition of good 
letters was a part of his being. Caesar's interest in his 
own Latin tongue was rooted probably in his appreciation 
of the potency of debate and pleading in public life. 
When Cicero in 46, before Thapsus, wrote his rapid sur- 

iCf. Plin., "Ep.," 5, 3, 5. 

2Lange, "R. A.," 3, 184; Nipperdey, " Opuscula," 315; Plut., 
"Cses.," 4 ; Westermann, " Gesch. der Beredsamkeit," 2, 301. 

263 



264 ANNALS OF CiESAR 

vey of Roman oratory, we must not make too much of the 
eulogy of the dictator's faculty of public eloquence which 
we now read in '''-Brutus^'" 252, 258, 261, because even 
here Cicero was somewhat under pressure and depend- 
ency. Not a little of Cicero's commendation, by the bye, 
refers to enunciation and purity of delivery by which 
Roman aristocrats were sometimes, particularly in certain 
families, distinguished. There were many gradations in 
the Latinity of 63-46 B.C. 

Two things further impressed the Arpinate critic in 
Csesar's oratory. One was a certain negative excellence, 
a certain flawlessness of correct Latin, and a certain true 
taste in the choice of phrase and diction. Cicero also in- 
timates that Ceesar was a painstaking student of niceties ; 
but of Caesar's Be Analogia we will speak by and by. 
Further, Cicero says (" Brutus," 261), Csesar had that 
peculiar faculty of moving his themes and points into the 
proper light, as good paintings are judiciously placed to 
produce their full effect. Also there was something 
luminous and generous in his oratorical manner, entirely 
free from foxiness and trickiness.^ To Cyesar's published 
speeches, Cicero, in 46 B.C., referred as to " quite a 
number" (complures). Even more stress may we lay 
upon a passage from a letter, now lost, of Cicero to 
Cornelius Nepos. (Suet., " Cccs.," ^^S) We learn that 
in the Dolabella speeches young Caesar still was a stu- 
dent of the published orations of his kinsman Csesar 
Strabo (who perished in the restoration of Marius) : in 
easy grace and much wit : absence of passionate fervor 
was remarked in the latter. ("Brut.," 177.) 

Here, too, we see with what impressive advantages, both 
social and cultural, the young aristocrat began, as an 
orator, that career which was to destroy the political 
preeminence of the very class from which he himself 
was sprung. 

1 Veteratoria ratio. 



THE WRITINGS OF CiESAR 265 

Quintilian says that if Caesar had devoted himself to 
the forum alone (10, 1, 114), no other Roman could 
have been named to vie with Cicero's fame. Quintil- 
ian, like Cicero, lays stress on the pure taste of Ctesar's 
Latinity. 

If we had his published speeches, we could, indeed, fill 
out the image of this extraordinary man in many material 
ways. What he could do at thirty-seven as a debater, we 
saw above in our survey of the session of the senate on 
Dec. 5, 63 B.C., when the penalty of the Catilinarians 
was to be determined. — In the time of Suetonius (110- 
120 A.D.) there were extant orations bearing Caesar's 
name, which were merely what professional scribes took 
down (Suet., 55) at the very delivery, and subsequently 
multiplied for publication and profit. The more do we 
feel as an obvious matter that we should infer that when 
Csesar himself published, he was sure of his point and 
convinced of the general importance of his theme. 

But we must now leave his oratory and turn to his 
" Commentarii de Bello Gallico.'' And first we may 
observe that at no time these relations became a school- 
book for Roman youth. Test of this can easily be 
made. The Indices of Keil's Grammatici contain, roughly, 
some 6000 references to Vergil, Cicero is cited about 
1000 times, Horace 700, Sallust 400; hut Coesars Gallic 
War is mentioned hut twice. We may confidently say 
that this work was unknown and unused as a text-book 
of the grammaticus, whether in the capital or in the 
provinces. 

Now while we desire not to duplicate any introduction 
to any edition of these relations, it is urgent that we 
should know approximately when and why the proconsul 
of Gaul decided upon such a publication. No settlement 
of the general question can be called absolute or conclu- 
sive. The evidence belongs to the elusive category called 
internal evidence : here, indeed, we might adopt the term 



266 ANNALS OF CiESAR 

of circumstantial evidence.^ Not much has been added to 
the fundamental computations of Schneider. Long is 
alone in his opinion that Caesar issued one Commentarius 
at a time, at the conclusion of each of the seven cam- 
paigns. 

Caesar did, indeed, from time to time, send official de- 
spatches to the senate, which often resulted in formal S. C. 
of recognition, decrees of thanksgiving, and the substance 
must, with other action of the senate, have found its way 
to the published Acta Senatus. It is definitely known 
that Caesar had his spokesmen — always some tribunes — 
on the floor of the senate. The overwhelming majority 
of these dignitaries from 58 to 49 B.C., were indeed "his 
own tribunes." Up to the Clodius-Milo episode in Janu- 
ary, 52, no S. C. had been legally adopted in Rome to 
deprive him of his impermm before it should terminate by 
the expiration of the second quiyiquennium^ which must 
mean about March-April, 48. We have seen how patient 
and tenacious Caesar was, not to snap asunder, on his part, 
the slender bond or thread that still connected him with 
Pompey after the Milo-Clodius encounter, when Pompey, 
as "consul without colleague," consented to resume 
power as leader of the oligarchy. 

Now, on Sept. 29, 51 B.C., Pompey at last so far yielded 
to the importunity of the Optimates as to declare himself 
on the problem of Caesar's succession — as to pronounce 
plainly that Caesar must obey the senate, and that any 
technicality of tribunician intercession in the premises 
must no longer be endured ; the aim being to have Caesar 

1 The critics enumerated by Dr. Holmes, pp. 166 sqq., are Schneider 
(1786-1856), Nipperdey (1821-1875), Fabia (1889), Mezger (1874-1875), 
E. G. Sihler (1890), George Long, Belloquet. To these names there 
should now be added that of Francis W. Kelsey : " The Title of Caesar's 
Work on the Gallic and Civil Wars," Am. Philol. Association, 1905. I 
disagree with that critic as to the purely literary valuation of the books. 
Cicero was not a free agent when he wrote his " Brutus^'"' in the strictest 
sense of the word. 



THE WRITINGS OF CiESAR 267 

in Rome as a private person in order to destroy him in a 
politico-criminal trial, perhaps with the legal indictments 
both of maiestas and of repetundarum. This trial might 
have called in question his consular legislation of 59, but 
the data, in the main, were expected to be drawn from 
his proconsulate in Gaul. Perhaps, indeed, Csesar might 
have been made a victim of his own Lex Julia Mepetun- 
darum.^ I have referred to it in the proper place, but 
must needs return to it here. That law was exceedingly 
strict in the financial responsibility of a provincial gov- 
ernor. As for giving any judicial verdict for money, 
we will not believe that of Ctesar. Nor will we assume 
that remission from any service-obligation could be com- 
pounded for, in his provinces, with money. But there 
was another side to this law (Kiibler, p. 173). There was 
the final financial account. Three copies, identical as to 
form, must be left in two different cities in the province, 
while one must be deposited in the treasury at Rome. 
The most difficult, after the accounting for the millions 
of Gallic gold, would have been, I believe, that chapter 
in this Lex Julia which forbade the following acts : " To 
leave the province (i.e.^ in person) to lead an army out of it^ 
to wage war on one's own initiative^ to approach a kingdom 
(let alone enter it) without the direction of the Roman 
people and of the senate^ ^ One may object to this by 
pleading the perpetual policy of conquest held by the 
Roman commonwealth. But the partisan bitterness now 
was engaged in a struggle involving questions of " to be 
or not to be." Caesar's utterance on the field of Pharsalos 
furnishes luminous exegesis to these considerations. 

1 Kiibler, "Fragraenta," p. 172. 

2 Cic, "Pison.," 50: " exire de provincia, educere exercitum, bellum 
sua sponte gerere, in regnum iniussu populi Romani aut senatus accedere.'* 
With all my admiration of the wonderful industry of Dr. T. Rice Holmes, 
I am inclined to believe that he overlooked this important issue. The 
trial of Csesar never was held, but there is not the slightest doubt as to 
the intention of his enemies. 



268 ANNALS OF CAESAR 

Further, we have in ancient tradition a distinct expres- 
sion — truly a partisan expression — of a review or valua- 
tion of all of Csesar's military acts in Gaul, a view intended 
to be overwhelming in the force of its condemnation : 
"Nor did he thereafter refrain from any opportunity of 
warfare, not even unjustifiable and dangerous warfare, 
provoking without warrant both races with whom there 
were treaty relations as well as those which were embit- 
tered and savage, to such a degree that the senate once 
voted (szV) to send envoys to investigate the condition 
of the provinces of Gaul aod some (Cato) moved to sur- 
render him to the enemy. But as his affairs passed off 
prosperously, he obtained official (religious) thanksgiving 
both more frequently and for more days than any one else 
ever did." (Suet. 24.) 

If hostile historians like Tanusius (Suet. 9) endeavored 
to incriminate Csesar with Catiline, where the data were 
somewhat elusive and obscure, it stands to reason that so 
rich a field as the long imperium of northwestern Europe 
was not neglected by them. After Pompey, at the end 
of September, 51 B.C., had at last thrown down the glove, 
Csesar could not very well have written of him, without 
the imputation of imbecility, in so gracious and courteous 
terms as he does in " B. G.," 7, 6. I believe that the 
Commentarii were dictated at some point of time within 
that period which began with the fall of Alesia, in the 
latter summer of 52, and ended with Pompey's declaration, 
September, 51. The capture of Yercingetorix, indeed, 
was among the last great events which preceded both the 
conception and the composition of that military relation : 
a report probably determined upon when the election of 
Marcus Marcellus had been achieved by Caesar's political 
antagonists. 

[The long, elaborate, and direct speech of Critognatus ("B. G.," 7, 
77), is the only marked exception to the usage of the Commentarii to give 
merely a summary report of discourse. I will briefly reply to Dr. Holmes 



THE WRITINGS OF CiESAR 269 

at this point. Caesar, indeed, had no special reporter or notarius in the 
besieged town: Thucydides, Sallust, Tacitus did not in similar cases. 
The practice of elaborate reproduction of set oratory in ancient historiog- 
raphy is somewhat familiar to classicists. Rarely was it based on the 
possession of documentary evidence. Still, Caesar uniformly, after great 
events, ascertained the drift of utterance and sentiment. It was neces- 
sary. So of a certain utterance of Pompey : "after the conclusion of the 
war, Csesar learned these facts from those who were present at the dis- 
course." 1 Or in the Civil War books again, 3, 60 : ut postea bello con- 
fecto cognitum est ; — 86, 1, ut postea cognitum est, of Pompey, where a 
considerable passage is reproduced "with dramatic directness. Of this inci- 
sive difference in the literary manner of the books of the Civil War we will 
hear later on.] 

But to return to the " Commentarii de Bello Gallico." 
Why not simply Lihri? Commentarii is a term of delib- 
erate modesty, disarming literary criticism in advance. 
The relation does not even claim to be literature. The 
word commentarius means rather a draft, record, paper, 
minute, syllabus, notes (as commentari is to devise, draft, 
design) ; it is often close to chirographus^ manuscript. 
Caesar's private papers after his death were often called 
Commentarii'^ by Cicero (as in the Philippics, passim). 
When Cgesar, therefore, probably soon after the catas- 
trophe of Alesia, and after the consulate of M. Marcellus 
(for 51 B.C.) was a certainty, and its chief aim, to recall 
Caesar, was getting under way — I say, when Ctesar then 
determined to publish his own account of his own procon- 
sulate, it was probably not so much to influence the miser a 
plebecula, chronic leech of the treasury; they were influ- 
enced by coarser arguments, in which Caesar was an expert : 
but to set forth, with great simplicity and with a minimum 
of literary apparatus, and to the end that his friends and 
partisans should have proper data, his own military acts 
in their apparent intrinsic necessity. Of his non-military 

1 Bello perfecto ab eis Caesar haec facta cognovit, qui serraoni inter- 
fuerunt. ("B. C," 3, 18.) 

2 ' Ephemerides ' in Plutarch and Appian, as well as in Symmachus 
and Servius, in the last part of the fourth century a.d., are probably to 
be taken merely as a variant of virofMv^aaTa. 



270 ANNALS OF CAESAR 

and administrative acts, or of the singular attachment 
which he seems to have had from his older provincials, 
especially between Alps and Po, the Commentarii say little 
or nothing. Among the buttresses of the structure of his 
ambition this was among the most important. Hirtius, 
indeed, in his supplement speaks freely of this weighty 
matter. Hirtius wrote his preface to this supplement 
some time after Caesar's death and before Jan. 1, 43 B.C. 
He there, too, refers to Caesar's " Commentarii," meaning, I 
believe, both Gallic and Civil War ; ^ they were published, 
he wrote, that historians should not lack the proper 
possession of materials : they were, indeed, a collection of 
reliable material. When Livy, long after Actium indeed, 
read these words of the fervid Caesarean, they must have 
impressed him as a veritable challenge. Now the story of 
the literary Cato-controversy (of which more by and by) 
shows that Hirtius was called upon to assist Caesar in 
literary matters. Even the composition of the Commen- 
tarii Hirtius in a manner witnessed : " The others know how 
well and faultlessly^ hut /, how easily and swiftly he com- 
pleted them.'' Now Hirtius did not attend Caesar seven 
distinct times, at the end of the several distinct campaigns 
from 58 to 52 B.C. Clearly, he speaks of one task, of one 
continuous execution. By "elegantia scribundi" Hirtius 
meant something widely different from our ' elegance ' : 
nay, it is the faculty of choosing not at all uncommon or 
overrefined words, but the ones best adapted to the matter 
involved, words strictly of current diction and usage. 

In his proconsular chancellery Caesar could indeed use 
trained jurists, such as Trebatius Testa at Samarobriva. 
Much more, however, he must have used a class of scribes 
then greatly coming into vogue, a kind of shorthand 
experts called notarii. Such, I believe, were the amanuen- 
ses to whom Caesar, with much speed, dictated his Com- 
mentarii. Plutarch (17), clearly after Oppius, says that 
1 Qui sunt editi, ne scientia tantarum rerum scriptoribus deesset. 



THE WRITINGS OF CESAR] 271 

Caesar dictated even when moving along on horseback ; 
that he could thus employ two scribes at the same time, 
or, "as Oppius said," even more.^ 

The tremendous crowding of matter is the most salient 
feature of these memoirs ; but it would seem very absurd 
to call this crowding a normal feature of Latin prose 
style. The figures^ or data with numerical specification, 
with which these relations abound, were, of course, from 
official records of the headquarters, such as those of the 
quaestor. 2 The necessity of limitation, however, is before 
me. There are two features in this famous piece of litera- 
ture which are particularly prominent. One is the pres- 
entation of all wars as quite necessary and unavoidable. 
Such passages are particularly found at the beginning of 
most wars. The British expeditions, e.g.^ were consid- 
ered, at Rome, in a very different light from the point of 
view put forward by Ca3sar himself. As between his 
general officers on the one side and the centurions and 
common legionaries on the other, he pays far more inter- 
est to the latter. Legati, to his eagle-like ambition, were 
more or less dispensable : their reward was largely in 
the form of enormous donations or political preferment : 
so with Labienus, whose wealth derived from Gaul was 
the talk of the day, with Antony, Caninius, Trebonius, 
Hirtius, Decimus Brutus, and, of the Civil Wars, Asinius 
Pollio.3 'Far different was the place of his legionaries, 
and the flower of them who always rose from the ranks 
— the_ centurions. It was for Caesar's sake that these 
wonderfully efficient mercenaries fought, lived, and died. 
As year followed year, their civic and political ties became 
fainter, and finally disappeared : no family ties, in most 

1 Add Plin., " N. H.," 7, 25 : scribere aut legere, simul dictare et audire 
solitum accepimus, epistulas vero tantularum rerum quaternas librariis 
dictare, aut si nihil aliud ageret, septenas. 

2 Cf. litterce publicce, 5, 47, 2, then (54 b.c.) kept at Samarobriva. 

8 Once more I must refer also to Mamurra, in Catullus, 29, with the 
rich commentary of Munro. 



272 ANNALS OF CiESAR 

cases, intervened. For Caesar alone did they exist. In 
both classes of Oommentarii does he bestow particular 
praise upon them. Specifically does he make veritable 
episodes in recording extraordinary acts of bravery, as of 
Pulio and Vorenus (" B. G.," 5, 44), or of another cen- 
turion at Pharsalos. Legion X became a kind of imperial 
guard. Its very name was a mighty power, as at Munda, 
even before the conflict began. 

More important to the modern student are the numerous 
references to his own designs, plans, motives. Thus are 
stated the causes of his Belgian campaign (2, 2, 1); the 
cause of the (unexpected) war of the Veneti (3, 7, 2) ; his 
decapitation of the ' senators ' of the Veneti (3, 16, 4); 
why he moved against the Menapii and Morini (3, 28, 1); 
a certain feature of Keltic habit and temperament (4, 5) ; 
why he disguised his sentiments to the Keltic chieftains 
(4, 6, 5) ; his dealing with the Usipetes and Tencteri (4, 
13 sqq.); his motives for crossing the Rhine (4, 20). 

Throughout we gain the impression that the public 
opinion and the body of principles to which he appeals is 
by no means that of humanity at large, — it is, after all, a 
limited one ; it is that of Rome, whose sovereignty of the 
Mediterranean world was held by the Romans as a law of 
history and as a finality of human civilization. 



[The Commentarii, not long before Thapsus, were praised by the 
foremost master of Latin prose : an intrusion almost, due to diplomatic 
courtesy, in Cicero's general survey of Roman oratory. The passage is in 
§ 262. The Commentarii there referred to are probably those of the 
Keltic campaigns alone. On the whole, the passage closely resembles the 
later commendation of Plirtius, a pupil of Cicero after Caesar's death in 
the domain of oratory. The Commentarii by Cicero are called nudi^ 
bare. This indeed is quite obvious ; rectU straight to the point, and 
straightforward, too ; we may subscribe to that ; Venusti^ charming ; 
yes, if our attention is set on the subject-matter alone : ' all fine writing 
of stylistic purpose being doffed, like a garment.' The body and sub- 
stance stands revealed. The artificial pulchritude, Cicero goes on to say, 
of coming historiography, in the case of foolish authors, will have a great 



THE WRITINGS OF CESAR 273 

field here. Wise historians, however, will let the matter entirely alone. 
Cicero felt in these writings, too, a luminous brevity (illustris brevitas) 
which differs much from obscure brevity. By itself brevity is often 
obscure. But Cicero in this somewhat forced digression, in a way, 
repaid a literary compliment. (V. Brut., 253.)] 

Caesar bad, some time before the conclusion of the Kel- 
tic campaigns, written a treatise dealing with problems of 
language and grammar, two books, De Analogia, written, 
as Suetonius the grammaticus asserts (" Cses.," bQ^, in some 
spring season, when returning from the Po country to 
his Transalpine domain. Fronto, the scholar of Hadrian's 
time, called these books scrupulosissimi ; they did, indeed, 
deal with the minutice of language, such as spelling and 
inflection. Also he endeavored therein to settle many 
controversial points which a Roman purist would like to 
have defined or established. Varro was attacked. This 
treatise was much cited by later grammatici^ such as Pris- 
cian and Charisius. It is impressive for the teacher of 
Latin to learn how unsettled many things still were. 
Caesar declined from panis^ bread, the genitive plural, as 
panium, whereas Verrius Flaccus, the teacher of Augustus' 
grandsons, demanded panum. The identity in form of 
dative and ablative in words like mare^ calear^ animal^ was 
laid down, while from iuhar the ablative was iuhare. 
Also Caesar was inclined to drop i in the dative singular 
of what we now call the fourth declension. The norma- 
tive influence of the Iota subscript of Greek analogy seems 
to have been potent to his grammatical vision. Such, too, 
probably, were the topics discussed in that last dinner 
which Caesar took at Cicero's villa near Puteoli, in the 
Saturnalia vacation, December, 45 B.C. Ctesar called this 
work which was inscribed to Cicero, De Analogia} i.e.^ on 

1 Similarly Varro dedicated of his compendious work " De Lingua 
Latina,^' the books from Vto XXV to Cicero. Cf. J. E. Sandys, " His- 
tory of Classical Scholarship," Vol. 1 (2d edition), p. 180. Steinthal, 
" Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft bei den Griechen und Romem," 
1863, p. 490. Varro de LL. 10, 1 (on similitudo and dissimilitudo declina' 

T 



274 ANNALS OF CiESAR 

Rule and Conformity as a principle of grammar ; whereas, 
by Anomalia^ the Greek grammarians meant actual usage 
(G-vvr]deLa^ consuetudo) as a principle of correctness, even 
when it ran counter to a rule or paradigm. 

The delicacy of this rare and versatile mind was curi- 
ously manifested in that book. Still more are we im- 
pressed with a power which could utilize any given leisure 
at will, and turn the intellect in any direction whatsoever. 



Csesar's other work is that called Commentarii de Bello 
Civili, in three books. These do not complete their great 
theme, but deal with the first two years only, viz., with 
49 and 48 B.C. A torso, in consequence of the Ides of 
March, 44 B.C., which Csesar began to compose when the 
Civil War was at an end. The passage: "as we after- 
wards found after the completion of the war " (3, 57, 5 ; 
60, 4), shows that Csesar could not very well have written 
so until after the campaign of Miinda. 

As a matter of literary composition, there is far less 
crowding and hurry in this relation, also less monotony, 
with the great variety of themes and situations: in Italy, 
at the capital, on the Adriatic, the catastrophe of Curio in 
Africa ; Dyrrachium, Thessaly, the beginning of the oper- 
ations in Alexandria. Scholars, wrapt in the cloak of 
their prevailing concerns, have censured the great captain 
for not adverting to the destruction (3, 111) of the Seror 
peion there, and with it, of the renowned library. — But 
the main thing about these Civil War books is this, after 
all, that these commentarii are the personal presentation 
of the dictator, who had determined, ah initio, not to be 
a second Sulla. His action at Corfinium had revealed to 
his own generation, surprised, amazed, incredulous though 
it was, a politician entirely sui generis and without par- 

tionis) in books 8, 9, 10. Also on consuetudo versus ratio. The original 
antagonists were Aristarchos of Alexandria, and Krates of Mallos. 



THE WRITINGS OF CESAR 275 

allel in the decline and dissolution of the Republic. 
About this time, in midwinter (50-49), he had written to 
Balbus and Oppius (^' Att.," 9, 7, C) . . . ''which I had 
determined to do on my own account: viz., to assume an at- 
titude of the greatest possible gentleness ; and as for Fompey, 
to endeavor to win him hack. Let us try if in this way we 
may recover the good-will of all, arid enjoy a victory which 
will be enduring ; since the others could not escape hatred on 
account of their cruelty, nor maintain their victorious posi- 
tion for any length of time, except L. Sulla only, whom I 
am not going to imitate,'''' This letter, like a modern proc- 
lamation, Caesar caused to be widely copied and dissem- 
inated. Tliis relation of these Commentarii is found to be 
in substantial harmony with this nobler political wisdom. 

In the larger view which we desire to take, we may 
profitably limit our attention to but a few features. Most 
precious and weighty are the elucidations of his own de- 
signs and motives. These concern largely strategy and 
the military history of these two years, and partly they 
deal with the political and moral aspect of the mighty 
struggle. 

Thus we learn in the first Spanish campaign (summer, 
49) that his aim was (1, 68 ; 72) to cut off the enemy 
from the Ebro and from grain supply. Further on we 
hear of the importance of the moral factors in strategy : 
" to seem to have avoided an engagement in opposition to 
the opinion of the soldiers and against universal reputa- 
tion, produced great injury." — Before setting out to cross 
to Epirus, he told the soldiers that they should expect 
everything from his liberality (3, 6, 2) : the point was to 
keep them in good humor, as they were packed very closely 
together in the two relays of successive transportation. 

With great frankness Csesar points out his difficult 
situation before Dyrrachium (3, 42, 3), due to the fact 
that the sea-power was largely in the hands of the Pom- 
peians. 



276 ANNALS OF CAESAR 

Further ou he shows the moral necessity of inflicting 
some palpable blow on Pompey, after the panic and dis- 
comfiture at Dyrrachium : his military pride is positively 
nettled, he categorically denies that valor determined the 
result. (3, 72, 5.) His psychological adroitness in deal- 
ing with his troops after that reverse, and his wise change 
of plans, impress the reader not a little. (3, 73-74.) 
All together, the design and motive of these Civil War 
delineations are revealed in those passages where his own 
clemency, generosity, magnanimity, are brought to our 
attention, while the stubbornness, cruelty, and perfidy of his 
adversaries are strongly revealed. Thus, when Petreius 
puts to the sword in the tent of his own headquarters some 
of Caesar's legionaries who had fraternized with the for- 
mer's soldiers. (1, 76, 4.) But when at last the same 
stiffnecked Pompeian was compelled to submit at discre- 
tion, the dictator treated him with exquisite forbearance, 
though he chided him with straightforward candor (1, 
95) : his own policy, indeed, had been to cause but a mini- 
mum of physical loss everywhere, so as to make a civil 
settlement and peace so much easier of accomplishment. 

His judgment of the scholarly Pompeian, Terentius 
Varro (2, 17), is, as I noted before, gently ironical. His 
old adversaries, Bibulus and Cato, fare badly at hi% hands. 
As for Bibulus, we marvel not so very much. As for 
Cato, it is a more serious matter. But even before Caesar 
composed these Memoirs of the Civil War, his own in more 
ways than one, had he written his reply to Cicero's eulogy 
of Cato, to wit, his Anticato. (Plut., " Cses.," 54.) In 
April, 46 (solar year), Cicero, deeply moved by the pass- 
ing of the one man who had been to him a civic ideal 
incarnate, planned to write his Laus Catonis, to him in- 
deed, as we noted before, a problem of the ' Archimedian ' 
order. Why ? 

Because every man in public life knew of the deep 
resentment which the dictator had long entertained for 



THE WRITINGS OF CAESAR 277 

the unyielding and fearless Stoic. Cicero knew that he 
would never succeed in writing in such a way that Cii^sar 
and Csesar's coterie would read the book with unruffled 
feelings. (" Att.," 12, 4, 2.) Such a book (as we noted 
before) he knew would be odious to them, even if Cicero 
were to shun scrupulously all political matters, and limit 
himself to the moral qualities and to the character of that 
rare man. While Cato's death had been a severe blow to 
Csesar, Cicero's book added immensely to the provocation. 
— In the summer after Caisar's death,i when, indeed, the 
orator's personal and political feelings were still at white 
heat, he penned a valuation of Csesar's book. Csesar 
then, in his ^^ Anticato,'' denied the facts which Cicero 
had brought forward to Cato's glory ; or, when the facts 
were, indeed, beyond controversy, he denied the right of 
Cicero to present them as laudable, or finally insisted 
that acts which could not be defended upon plain ethical 
nor legal grounds, were at all worthy of praise. Caesar, 
by the bj^e, read Cicero's " Cato " a great many times 
(scepissime^ and admitted that he gained much for his 
own faculty of presentation from this frequent perusal. 
("Att.," 13, 46, 2.) Hirtius was appointed by Caesar to 
collect all possibly gatherable faults and shortcomings of 
Cato. (" Att.," 12, 40, 1.) It was only in 45 B.C. that 
Csesar's reply was issued. ^ There were two books, to 
reply to Cicero's one. Csesar said he knew that as a mere 
soldier he could not compete in literary power with a 
brilliant orator who had enjoyed abundant leisure for his 
task. The dictator, I say, had been stung to the quick, 
for, as with a fine comb, he had reviewed and censured 
and belittled every act and every little thing in the pri- 
vate life of his dead adversary ^ in a manner which even 
the most devoted and desperate admirer of Caesar would 

iCic, "Topica," 94. 

2Kubler, "Fragm.," 145. 

3 E.g., Plut., "Cat. Min.," 11 ; 36 ; 52 ; 54. 



278 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

find impossible to justify. One cannot avoid, in all fair- 
ness, turning to Plutarch in these premises. After relating 
the deep regret with which the victor of Thapsus had re- 
ceived the news of Cato's death, the Greek essayist goes 
on to say : "(The discourse written by him (Caesar) after 
these things, directed against dead Cato, does not seem 
the symptom of one gently disposed, nor prone to a 
reconciliation." 

But it is my conviction that Cato's granite will would 
have spurred the living Cato to a direct denial of Caesar's 
right, perhaps of Caesar's honor, nay, to some form of 
fearless defiance, which would enormously have embar- 
rassed the dynast who had so firmly resolved not to 
imitate Sulla. Caesar ^ wrote this treatise about the time 
of the campaign of Miinda. Perhaps, in taking leave, as 
we now do, of so uncommon a man, we must say that it 
was the smallest act of his entire career. 



1 According to Suet. , 56. 



CHAPTER XXIV 

THE SUPPLEMENTARY ACCOUNTS 
HiRTius' Conclusion of Gallic WarI 

Not all the partisans of Caesar were place-men, though most of them 
appeared so to those on the other side. Many were absolutely new men, 
descended from unknown fathers. In this respect, too, the Civil War of 
Csesar reminds us of Napoleon and his times. Men of positive talent 
came to the front much faster than in ordinary times, for as the crises 
of political history produce a much greater strain, they call for more un- 
common men, and there results an acceleration of promotion entirely 
unknown to the piping times of peace. 

Aulus Hirtius was a native of the municipium of Ferentinum, a part 
of central Italy where the oak begins to replace the fig tree, in the ancient 
canton of the Hernici^ and like Cicero he was a new man. In the " Gallic 
War" Csesar named him not once ; and still, before Kubicon and Corfin- 
ium, there were few men of Caesar's innermost coterie in whom he placed 
a confidence as complete as in Hirtius, using him for delicate political mis- 
sions. We may say that with Balbus and Oppius he formed a veritable 
clover leaf of Csesarians, devoted and faithful also to their chief's mem- 
ory after his death. Quintus Cicero knew Hirtius during the Gallic wars. 
In December, 44 b.c, a short time before the consular inauguration of 

Hirtius, Quintus wrote a letter to , his brother's literary secretary, 

full of bitter invectives against Hirtius ("Fam.," 16, 27, 1), charging him 
with loafing and self-indulgence during a certain summer campaign in 
Gaul : a character so flabby and contemptible that Quintus would not 
intrust Hirtius with the management of an obscure little country town, 
let alone the administration of Rome. But the passionate and somewhat 
petty soul of Quintus is too well known to us, as it was revealed in the 
tribulations of his domestic affairs and those of the Civil War ; we hear 
the voice of spite and envy, which must not prevail as over against Caesar's 
trust and his deliberate and lasting attachment. 

It was, then, the incessant urging of Balbus (preface to " B. G.," 8) 
which finally prevailed upon Caesar's old confidant and literary helper (as 
in the Cato matter) to undertake to fill out the lacunae, in Caesar's extant 
works. Balbus and the men like him did not, after the Ides of March, 
clamor for an apology or for a new eulogy of Caesar's political and mili- 
tary career. What they deplored was the cleft in the record of Caesar's 

1 O. Hirschfeld, " Hermes," 24, p. 101 sq. 
279 



280 ANNALS OF CAESAR 

own composition. There was ' no coherence of his former and subsequent 
writings,' and these latter, too, closed abruptly with the beginning of the 
Alexandrine war. Hirtius, then, consented first to complete the account 
of the Gallic campaigns, i.e., the work of the years 61-50 b.c, and further, 
to carry the narrative of the Civil War from the events at Alexandria, 
say roughly from January, 47 b.c, to the 15th of March, 44 b.c. This 
preface itself breathes the unrest and the actual confusion of the political 
day in which it was written, the era subsequent to the death of Csesar. 
Whatever Hirtius did compose was all done before Jan. 1, 43 b.c. He, 
too, found the autocratic insolence of Antony insufferable, and even 
before May 1 withdrew to the watering-places northwest of Naples, where 
he availed himself of Cicero's proximity to train himself in oratory. Cic- 
ero tried in vain to make an Optimate of him. Hirtius, in turn, desired 
to avail himself later on (as consul) of Cicero's eminent talent against 
Antony. Caesar's admirers were not anxious to have the new autocrat 
rule as Caesar II. 

Now Hirtius, in his letter or preface to Balbus, says indeed of all the 
matter to fill out the lacunae of the years 51, 50 . . . 47, 46, 45, 44 . . . 
to March 15 — " Confeci.'''' But he undertook it all only after Caesar's 
death. It is incredible to assume that he achieved it all in so short a 
time.i Confeci, then, is purely an anticipatory formula, meaning what 
his scope and plan was. 

He was not in Egypt nor in the African campaign of Thapsus,^ and he 
says that he realized deeply the difference of literary effect between those 
things which we relate out of our own experience and those that come to 
us through the description of another. The substance of Book VIII has 
been presented above, in its proper chronological place. Antony (c. 50) 
is mentioned in a courteous phrase : he was, after all, still the most pow- 
erful man in Italy while Hirtius wrote. The whole chapter 50 breathes 
defiance to Caesar's political enemies, a sentiment not at all assuaged or 
cowed by the Ides of March. Cesar's generous and conciliatory nature 
(that element of the rare man's character which even then more than 
ever was admired by his mourning friends) is repeatedly emphasized by 
Hirtius (8, 21, 2 ; 8, 38, 5) ; so, too, Caesar's devotion to Labienus (8, 
52), his acumen (8, 41, 2), his earnest desire during a great part of 
50 B.C. to conform to constitutional provisions (8, 52). Caesar's adver- 
saries are put in the wrong. The bitter partisanship of six years ago still 
seems to throb in this phrase (where Hirtius describes the appeals of 
Curio) : " If the fear of Caesar's military power caused pain to any one, 
since Pompey's autocratic sway (clominatio) and arms caused to the 
forum no less fear. ..." Hirtius even recapitulates important events 
of 61 B.C. from a record of the senate : a partisan here writes, who, after 

1 So, too, Nipperdey, " Quaest. Caesarianae," p. 16 ; Jahresbencht, 37, 
p. 137. 

2 But he was in the Pharnaces campaign and that of Munda. 



THE SUPPLEMENTARY ACCOUNTS 281 

Caesar's death, justifies Caesar's entry upon the Civil War as completely 
as the dictator would have done with his own pen. 



The "Bellum Alexandrinum " 

That Aulus Hirtius wrote this book can neither be conclusively proved 
nor disproved. 1 Suetonius, a critical and well-trained grammaticus 
("Caes.," 66), was uncertain. If Caesar's conversations, in that inner- 
most circle of which Hirtius was one, were so full and so detailed that the 
mere reminiscence thereof would furnish to Hirtius the account which we 
now read in the first thirty -two chapters, then either Caesar talked verita- 
ble diaries to his friends, or Hirtius had a most wonderful memory, or he 
had made notes of Caesar's talk. But at all events, " Alexandrine War " 
is somewhat of a misnomer. It has been, and quite properly, suggested 
to call it the "Fourth Book of the Civil War." The dynastic squabble 
among the children of Ptolemy Auletes is referred to (c. 4) with the 
words: " as has been shown above," but this reference carries back to 
Caesar's own "Civil War," 3, 112, 10. Thus the "Bellum Alexandri- 
num " is a continuation of the most closely dovetailed order, as though 
it were part and parcel of the foregoing. 

The exactness of many points of detail is noticeable. Thus the item 
that legion XXXVII was carried to the beaches of Africa (c. 9) two 
days after Caesar secured sweet water. Such, too, are the data of hours 
in a given day ; the exact contingents of Rbodian, Pontic, Cilician, and 
other ships which Caesar had (c. 12) ; the arrangements of the Alexan- 
drines, as though by a direct observer (c. 14) ; the gallantry of the Rho- 
dian naval commander, Euphranor (15), and his heroic death (35) ; the 
struggle for the capture of the isle of Pharos ; the description of the mole 
and bridge with one arch of masonry under which a vessel could pass ; 
the panic at the mole, and how Caesar left his own craft by swimming 
(21), with enough detail to show that his audacity was not merely ex- 
cusable, but an act of self-preservation ; the departure of the schoolboy 
king from Caesar's headquarters in the palace, with the lively delineation 
both of the youth's remarkable histrionic powers, as well as of Caesar's 
impressionable and generous nature : all these and many more data create 

'^ Eduard Fischer, "das achte Buch vom Gallischen Krieg und das 
Bellum Alexandrinum," Passau, 1880. Nipperdey, " Quaest. Caes." ; cf. 
"Att.," 15, 6. FieZ^a6er proposed a new title : "De Bello Civili Com- 
mentarius Quartus." Add Jahresher., vol. 37, p. 136 sqq. — I have 
noted the occurrence of some very idiomatic turns of phrase in both " B. 
G.," VIII and in "B. Alex." Thus: Frustra : nam, etc., 8, 5, 3 ; nequi- 
quam : nam, 8, 19, 6 ; and in " B. Alex.," 29, 5, sed id frustra : namque, 
29, 5; quo fors tulerat, " B. G.," 8, 19, 7 ; fors, " B. Al.," 22, 2. — Equi- 
tatum procedere . . . imperat, " B. G.," 8, 27, 4 ; cf. imperat pontem proe- 
vallari, "B. AL," 19, 4. 



282 ANNALS OF CiESAR 

in us a very strong feeling that we are dealing with a very reliable author- 
ity, if not with an eye-witness. 

There are two points in these accounts which betray the Caesarian par- 
tisan. JMiat we learn is assuredly true, but the whole truth is not told. 
And this holds, first, as to the absence of certain statements of time. It 
was, as we have noted in the proper place, on January 14 of solar year 
47 B.C., or March 27 by the uncorrected Koman calendar, that Csesar 
gained complete control. What, then, did he do in February, March, 
April, and certainly the earlier part of May ? 

Chapter 33 briefly relates the dynastic settlement made by Csesar. 
Here, and here only, the author mentions the name of Cleopatra, as co- 
heir with her little brother : she was actually twenty-one to twenty-two, 
while the child was under thirteen. Also the writer justifies the removal 
out of the kingdom of the princess Arsinoe, who had withdrawn from 
Caesar's control. From this account, too, one would gain the impression 
that Caesar set out for Syria immediately after the dynastic settlement, 
whereas he remained from January 14 (solar time) to some time in May. 

Caesar's friends were positively interested in hushing up or ignoring 
the Cleopatra matter as much as possible, for we know that Oppius wrote 
a special monograph, in which he denied that the child of Cleopatra was 
Caesar's. (Suet., " Caes.," 52.) 

Further on, the " Bellum Alexandrinum " explains the reverses of 
Caesar's side in the province of Illyricum, after Pharsalos (42-47). Next 
are taken up the evil records of the man whom Caesar, after the Ilerda 
campaign, left in the peninsula as propraetor of Further Spain, thus re- 
warded for the flight to Ravenna, viz., Q. Cassius Longinus. Both he 
and Caesar were dead when this account was made up. Cassius is treated 
with uncompromising severity by the Caesarian author, although Cassius, 
too, had been a Caesarian, In fact, so dark is the record of that governor 
that the political sins of those communities, which in sheer desperation 
turned to the Pompeian side, appear almost as venial in this partisan 
account (48-64). 

Next follow the settlement of the East and particularly the whirlwind 
campaign across the breadth of eastern Asia Minor, from Tarsus to Zela. 
The treatment which Caesar dealt to the Galatian dynast Deiotarus is jus- 
tified by the author in the employment of Caesar's own arguments. These 
in a curious way maintain the attitude not of autocratic power, but of 
constitutional considerations : viz., that, after the consulate of Marcellus 
and Lentulus (49 e.g.), he, Caesar, had been the legitimate consul of the 
subsequent year (48), so that those potentates who succored Pompey 
in the Macedonian campaign had antagonized the regular and only legiti- 
mate administration of Rome, of Italy, and of the empire itself. 

The contact and conflict with King Pharnaces (69-77) is told in such a 
manner as to create the impression that the author lived through all he 
describes. 

The disorders and dissensions in the capital in which Dolabella figured 



THE SUPPLEMENTARY ACCOUNTS 283 

so conspicuously, are summarized (65) without, however, naming any- 
one. Between March 15, 44, and Jan. 1, 43 b.c, it was not wise for any- 
Caesarian to provoke the Caesarians Dolabella or Antony, who held the 
consular purple after Caesar's death. 



The " Bellum Africum " 

The writer of this admirable account presents a narration of Caesar's 
African campaign from his leaving Libybaeum in Sicily in the latter part 
of December, 47, b.c. (uncorrected), really early in October of that year, 
until he landed at Caralis (Sardinia) on April 17, 46 (solar year), arriv- 
ing in Rome on May 26, 46 b.c. It is unwise to weigh this military 
writer in the scales of the grammaticus. The efforts made by two Ger- 
man Latinists, Landgraf (in 1888) and Woelfflin (in 1889), to make 
Asinius PoUio the author, i and by phraseological parallels with the slen- 
der remnants of his pen to make a plausible demonstration out of a mere 
conjecture, have not impressed scholars at large as cogent or conclusive. 

Asinius was in the camp. Also, at Rome, and from the latitude of 
Italy, Pollio loomed up pretty large. During the campaign a rumor 
reached Rome that Asinius had somehow fallen into ^ the hands — not 
of the enemy, but — of 'the soldiers,' alive: what soldiers? In the 
" B. Africum" itself Pollio is not mentioned at all by name, and still 
Caesar entertained so high an opinion of him that he had designated him 
governor of Further Spain for 43 b.c. In the " B. Afr.," there are men- 
tioned of Caesar's lieutenants L. Munatius Plancus (c. 4), C. Sallustius 
Crispus (34), C. Messius (33), Oppius (68), Caninius (93). We may 
suppose that the author would not have composed his account, if Hirtius 
had lived to go on with his own general programme of supplementation. 
Perhaps Oppius invited him to do so, for he, as we abundantly know, was 
not any less concerned in the posthumous fame of Caesar than Balbus 
himself. Returning once more to the brilliant Pollio, we may say that he 
would have accepted commissions from Caesar himself willingly enough, 
but so intense was the amour-propre which his maturer career revealed, 
that I consider it wildly improbable that Pollio should have written such 
an account without having his own name appear even once. It is more 
plausible then, I think, to assume that Oppius selected some military per- 
son who was not only well versed in knowledge of the actual operations of 
war and well qualified to relate them in a clear and definite manner, but 
also had been near the person of the imperator himself, perhaps an 
inmate of the prcetorium. But even if not so, there are details which 
betray at least an intense desire to lose nothing of importance from the 

1 " Jahresbericht," vol. 68. 

2 Delatus . . . (" Att.," 12, 2, 1). Tyrrell does not attempt to elucidate 
the passage any further (vol. 4, p. 289) : but cf. " B. Afr.," c. 85. 



284 ANNALS OF CESAR 

beginning. Thus, at the very start the characteristic eagerness and impa- 
tience of the great captain who pitched his tent so close to the sea that it 
was actually wetted by the spray (c. 1). A delicate psychological obser- 
vation the author makes in c. 26 : when Caesar had sent orders to Sicily 
that there be sent to him a further convoy of reinforcements, he was in 
such a frame of eager impatience that on the very day after he had 
despatched these orders, he said, "army and fleet were tarrying, and day 
and night he kept his eyes and his mind set and fixed on the sea." 

At another time (c. 31), while sitting in the prcetorium, without going 
out nor looking abroad from the ramparts of the stockade, he gave direc- 
tions for the movements of foragers, pickets, and other cavalry. The 
author was still wrapt in admiration when he set down these things. He 
records the concealed pointed stakes used by Caesar in defence of a posi- 
tion (31, 7), without, however, citing Alesia, where exactly the same 
devices had been employed. 

This writer was by no means a mere subaltern who would recite 
merely the outward events as they happened from day to day, but with 
all his affection and admiration for Caesar — all the more sincere because 
it was directed at one who was dead — with all this, I say, there is a cer- 
tain luminosity in his setting forth of Caesar's underlying designs, and 
of the deeper necessities which determined certain lines of action. 

The enemy had hopes, with the clouds of myriads of Numidian horse- 
men, to smother the recruits of Caesar by sheer numbers (c. 28). This 
was the hope of Labienus. That partisan leader cuts a large figure in 
this narrative. Our author often assumes an almost dramatic liveliness 
in presenting Caesar's old lieutenant, who had even succeeded in enlisting 
and bringing over a goodly number of the stalwart blond Kelts of north- 
west Europe (28, 3). Our author defends Caesar's cautious measures 
(31, 8) such as marked the earlier stages of this supremely difficult cam- 
paign, when the mighty imperator could not call more than a slender strip 
of six miles in all the province his own. In some of these apologetic pas- 
sages the writer clearly overshoots the mark (e.g., 31, 9): " It was not on 
this account that he did not lead out his forces into line of battle because 
he had no faith in their gaining a victory, but he thought it was a matter 
of moment what kind the victory was to be ; for he deemed it disgraceful 
to himself after so many achievements and after the defeat of so great 
armies to have the reputation of having gained a victory that was a bloody 
one, over the remnant forces of his adversaries, forces gathered together 
from the rout (i.e., of Pharsalos). Therefore he had determined to 
endure their boastful exultation until some portion of his veteran legions 
should have joined him by the second convoy of transportation." Such, 
no doubt, had been the drift of talk among Caesar's older officers, of 
whom the author was one : perhaps a trihunus militum. 

And when, even after the arrival of the second and third convoys, 
Caesar, while offering battle, did not force an engagement, the author 
actually excuses him (73). Caesar's veterans had been accustomed in 



THE SUPPLEMENTARY ACCOUNTS 285 

Gaul to wage war on level surfaces and against Gauls, men without guile 
and not at all given to employing ambuscades, accustomed to do their 
fighting by sheer gallantry, not with the employment of cunning, such 
as the Numidians employed on African soil. Clearly a veteran of the 
Keltic campaigns. 

The Roman spirit and pride of the author is revealed, when he de- 
scribes how Scipio, the generalissimo of the adversaries, consented to 
humiliate himself in his dealings with the barbarian king Juba, promising 
the latter to discontinue wearing the scarlet cloak of the Roman com- 
mander-in-chief (57). 

The ruthless and cruel treatment which Scipio inflicted upon certain 
of Csesar's veterans who had fallen into his hands is elaborated with 
dramatic vividness of speech and counterspeech (44-46) when a centurion 
of more than thirty-six years of service defied the stubborn representative 
of the oligarchy to his face, and was slain on the spot. Such, we may 
assume, was the general spirit of Csesar's veterans, who, two years later, 
were enraged, but not cowed, by the Ides of March, and whose enmity 
drove Brutus and Cassius from the soil of Italy, long before the grain 
turned golden in that fateful year. 

Quite different, however, is the spirit in which the author deals with 
Cato. First (c. 22) we are told how, at Utica, that fearless man chided 
Cn. Pompey, the younger, and goaded him into activity by citing the elder 
Pompey's youthful labors and tireless enterprise. Cato's end is told 
with a respectfulness and a moral regard which is without qualification 
or any spirit of belittling. His resolution and his perfect self-command, so 
completely in harmony with the best traditions of Roman character and 
ideals, are related in c. 88. 

In the great victory of Thapsus, in a measure extorted from Caesar by 
the angry passion of his seasoned veterans (82 sqq.), it is clear that the 
author deplores and keenly regrets the butchery of their countrymen, per- 
petrated by Csesar's own legions, and strives so to delineate Csesar's own 
efforts to check them, as to maintain unimpaired the latter's personal fame 
and policy of generosity, mercy, and forbearance. 



The "Bellum Hispaniense " 

The writer reveals himself to us, as all writers do, though we know 
neither his name nor official position ; we would be but slightly aided in 
our task if we did. He is a militaiy man, and he served in this war, from 
the beginning, sometime in December, 46, or the intercalary period imme- 
diately preceding, to April 12, 45 and beyond, when it seems military 
operations came to an end. 

We cannot well assume that Balbus or Oppius would have requested 
so unpolished, so uncouth a writer to describe Csesar's last and most des- 
perate campaign, that there might be rounded out or completed the 
accounts of his military achievements. 



286 ANNALS OF CiESAR 

CaBsar, he says, came to Spain i " to bring the war to conclusion." 
"What war ? The recrudescence of the Pompeian faction in a number of 
towns of the Baetis-country ? Or is it not rather the entire Civil War 
that he means ? 

The Latin written by the author — for I must not lug in here the 
artistic reproduction of the sermo vulgaris by Petronius — his Latin, I 
say, both in style and grammar, is so unique, so defiant of the norms and 
usages of the greater contemporaries such as Cicero, Csesar, Sallust, Hir- 
tius, or the " Bellum Africuin " even, that the task of emendation becomes 
doubly hazardous, if not positively impossible. 

The author twice cites Ennius (then the Koman school author par 
excellence) for the illumining of battle scenes (23, 3 ; 31, 7). Once, also, 
he brings forward as a parallel the meeting of Achilles and Memnon: 
the particular poem referred to probably was the " Aithiopis " of Arktinos, 
an heroic poem of the Epic Cycle of Greek letters. Are those somewhat 
mechanical adornments from the Grammaticus and from the earliest drill 
always begun with this section of poetry, both Greek and Latin ? There 
are a number of Grecisms ^ in his grammar, which I must not discuss in 
this place : it is clear that he had Greek training, too, and that this rela- 
tion, perhaps his first serious effort at composition since his schooldays, 
exhibits this characteristic intrusion here and there of Greek into Latin. 

A tiro^ clearly, in letters. This is particularly palpable in the ex- 
tremely narrow range of phrase and expression and from the awkward 
and unpleasant iteration of turns of speech at very short intervals, such 
as we would not tolerate in a pupil of an American high school or English 
grammar school. My belief is that the man was a centurion, no more. 
I cannot conceive a military tribune, who was at least of the equestrian 
class, and an aspirant for qufestorship and so for the senate, to have 
written an account of so elementary a quality. The end is truncated, 
though much cannot have been lost. 

The causes of this war in southern Spain are taken for granted as 
known. What the account lacks, and woefully so (as a military narra- 
tive), is perspective and proportion. There is no sense of proportion, 
of relative weight, or of incisive events. The writer lives from hand to 
mouth. Like a man who has merely risen from the ranks, he recites 
incidents and events as they happened from day to day, and as they in- 
terested the rank and file. In this respect the "Bell. Hispan." ranks 
painfully below the "Bell. Africum." Like the writer of the latter, he 
refers to the Pompeians more frequently by the term adversarii than 
hostes. The names of towns and posts occurring are Corduba, Ulia, 

1 With great speed. The twenty-seven days in the general tradition 
are probably derived from Caesar's poem Iter. The author (2) writes: 
'cum celeri festinatione ad bellum conficiendum cum venisset.' 

2 Inclusive of the Genitive Absolute : Eius praeteriti temporis, 14, 1 ; 
to which add 23, 5. 



THE SUPPLEMENTARY ACCOUNTS 287 

Ategua, TJcuhis (Saguntum, c. 10), JJrsao, Soricaria, Hispalis, Ventipo, 
Carruca, Munda, Carteia, Gades. That Scapula of Corduba, a Roman 
knight, perhaps a banker, was the head of the entire rising (totius sedi- 
tionis caput, c. 33) in southern Spain, we learn, and this tallies perfectly 
with an expression in Cicero's letters. i It is reasonably sure that the 
account was compiled very soon after the conclusion of the campaign, if 
not during the course of the same. Munda certainly would loom up or 
stand out much better and clearer than is now the case. The author 
seems to have served in the campaign of Thapsus (8, 3) ; he notes that 
fortified places in Spain are more impregnable ; it is difficult to pitch a 
camp near them ; their supply of water is good (8, 2) : this was well 
urged by one who had served in the Ilerda campaign of 49, or in Gaul. 

We have before us in the main, a chronicle or diary of that which 
happened from day to day. The very notation of time is uniform or 
monotonous: "the next night," "the next morning," "next day," "in 
the second watch," "in the following time," "when this time had gone 
by," "on the following day." — As for the detail of this relation, we 
everywhere gain the impression that we are dealing with an eye-witness 
or an ear-witness. Thus we are told, that Csesar, when he found the 
BcBtis too deep to ford, made a bridge (5, 1) by sinking in the river 
baskets filled with stones and laying his beams upon these ; also he de- 
scribes the density of the fog^t Pompey's approach (6, 3), Arguetius 
arrives from Italy, by way of Saguntum, with five standards captured 
from the people of that town (10, 1). That night Pompey set his camp 
on fire and withdrew towards Corduba. — The cases of desertion from 
Pompey to Ceesar are noted (c. 11) with such precision that one is driven 
to conclude that the author drew on some current record made at the 
time. Two legionaries were captured who once were enrolled under Tre- 
bonius: as deserters they were executed (12, 1-2). Despatch bearers of 
Pompey who came from Corduba were captured. They had blundered 
into Caesar's camp. Their hands were cut off and they were let go (12, 
3). On a certain day three horsemen who had been on picket service 
were slain by the Pompeians (13, 1). On the same day A. Valgius, the 
son of a senator, abandoned all his baggage, mounted his horse, and fled. 
A spy of Pompey's Legion II was captured and put to death. A leaden 
bullet fell into Caesar's camp with such and such an inscription. ... So 
the account runs on as though a centurion were composing a list of events 
from a diary. 

The great battle of Munda (31 sqq.), as we intimated before, is very 
Inadequately told. Evidently, the military pride of the writer is in sore 
straits. The invincible imperator had been always extolled by his men: 
to admit that he was or could be in a critical situation full of anxiety, 
comes very hard to the writer, but is somewhat softened by emphasizing 
the topographical advantage of the Pompeians. — Our writer's account 

1 Quod bellum commotum a Scapula ("Fam.," 9, 13, 1). 



288 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

does not go beyond the narrow limitation of his own service and vision 
on that field. 

The last part of this account gives Caesar's address at Gades, which 
begins and is carried on for a while in indirect discourse, but passes over 
into dramatic directness. Csesar seems to have chided the provincials with 
great severity for their fickleness and tergiversation. He upbraided them 
for the attack in broad daylight upon the life of Cassius, their governor. 
This address is presented with a vigor and with forceful antitheses of the 
rhetorical art which were simply beyond the poor literary powers of this 
writer. The angry pride of Csesar breathes from every sentence, with the 
living pulse-beat of truth and psychological concinnity. Four years of 
sweeping with his victorious eagles the battlefields of the Mediterranean 
world, from the foothills of Armenia, and from the mouth of the Nile to 
where the tides of the Atlantic surge near the pillars of Hercules — this 
dazzling chain of successes had clearly affected the sanity and the equi- 
poise of the dictator : "In what did you prove yourselves victors ? Or, if 
I had been destroyed, did you not observe that the Roman people had ten 
legions, which could not only stop ycni, but even demolish the very firma- 
ment of heaven f' The Civil War had lasted longer than Csesar had 
reckoned. This Spanish rising, however, at the end of all, due, too, to 
Caesar's appointment of the wretched and rapacious Cassius, had come 
desperately near dashing from his very Ij^s the cup of ambition and the 
fruition of designs entertained by the towering Julius, from the very 
beginning of his political career. 



CHAPTER XXV 

THE OTHER SOURCES 
Cicero 

Cicero presents to us the fullest and most vivid, though by no means 
the fairest or truest reflection of the most important events or of entire 
periods in Caesar's career, always excepting the Gallic wars, of which there 
are but glimpses. The earliest allusion to Cffisar probably occurred in 
Cicero's oration In Toga Candida (in 64 b.c), where, as Asconius 
thought, he, without naming him outright, alluded to Caesar as one of 
several (two ?) powerful politicians who did their best to defeat Cicero's 
consular aspirations. 

On Dec. 5, 63 b.c, in Cicero's consular year, in the debate about the 
Catilinarians, Caesar, who then spoke in the praetorian place, is directly 
recognized as leader of the popularis party, as a consistent politician of 
that order. Caesar is treated there with consummate courtesy and respect 
(cf. "Att.," 12, 21). 

But the orations, with their publicity and with the constraint bound up 
with manifold official considerations, are incomparably inferior to the let- 
ters. These, again, must be used with a certain caution. Those to his 
alter ego Atticus are the most valuable. But true these, too, are merely 
in so far as they faithfully mirror or reflect the actual movement on the 
surface of Cicero's feelings, whether of joy or sadness, of triumph or 
apprehension, of hatred or despair; for Cicero was altogether an 
emotional character. 

The period beginning wdth Cicero's return from exile and extending to 
the breach between the two dynasts (i.e., from September, 67 b.c, to 
September, 51 b.c), is one where Cicero was really a dependent of Pom- 
pey, and of Caesar, from whom he even borrowed money, when the bril- 
liant Arpin ate so painfully realized both the impotence and the indifference 
of the aristocracy whose lives and fortunes he believed to have saved. 
Cicero is keenly alive to this new dependency, although somewhat eu- 
phemistically he calls it his alliance with Caesar {nova coniunctio, 
"Att.," 4, 5). 

The famous speech De Provinciis Consularihus of 56 b.c is one of 
the political results, as we saw heretofore, of the conference of Luca. 
The true commentary of his outward acts we found in his frank confession 
to Atticus (4, 5). 

The letters to Trebatius Testa ("Fam.," book 7), 64 b.c, mainly, 
u 289 



290 ANNALS OF CESAR 

evidently were to Cicero in Rome, a welcome and semi-politic means of 
maintaining pleasant relation with Caesar far away, while the legateship 
of brother Quintus, under Csesar, shows us with what practical shrewd- 
ness the great manipulator of men held Cicero, at the very least, in such 
dependence that the latter' s eloquence in these years was never directly 
turned to Caesar's disadvantage. 

In a certain way, indeed, Cicero tried to persuade both himself and 
public opinion in Rome, that he was really independent. To this deeper 
aspiration we may ascribe certain speeches of the years 56-55: viz., the 
Sestiaria, with its appendix, In P. Vatinium Testem Interrogation and the 
Pisoniana of 55 b.c. In these, Cicero satisfied to the full his spirit of 
hatred and revenge, sparing in no wise certain politicians, no matter how 
close they were to Caesar himself, such as the latter's father-in-law, Cal- 
purnius Piso, and A. Gabinius, tool of Pompey's ambition. Cicero knew, 
with all this, that his relations to the dynasts were such that he need 
fear no second exile. ("Quint. Fratr.," 2, 15, B. 2.) 

It is from the letters of Ccelius to Cicero (then proconsul of Cilicia) that 
we learn (" Pam.," 8, 1 sqq.) to observe and estimate the growing tension 
and approaching crisis (of 51 e.g.) in the relations of the two dynasts: 
also the essence of Pompey's political personality is curiously illumined. 

After Rubicon, Corfinium, and Brundisium (49 b.c), almost the entire 
Civil War is fully marked and marshalled in the letters to Atticus, from 
book 7 onward, down to the visit of Csesar in the Saturnalia vacation 
December, 45, at Cicero's Puteolanum, so that no other source permits so 
delicate an insight into the drift and trend of events, as well as into the 
body of sentiments and judgments evoked by the former in a soul as im- 
pressionable and mobile as was that of Cicero. These letters, moreover, 
particularly those written after Pharsalos, make a contribution to history 
which is impressive, nay, overwhelming, in fixing or determining the task 
of impartial historiography. Cicero, who had risked all for a purely 
sentimental attachment to Pompey, convinced himself in the camps of 
Dyrrachium and Pharsalos, that the victory of Pompey and the oligarchy 
would have resulted in a catastrophe more awful and sweeping than had 
been the proscriptions of Sulla himself. 

Further, these letters reveal for a long time a profound distrust on Cic- 
ero's part towards Csesar himself. We see that, in spite of a long series 
of generous and kindly acts, Cicero, from November, 48, to September, 
47, B.C., was in a chronic dread that Caesar, after all, would reveal him- 
self a new Sulla. — On the whole, we see Cicero deeply distraught, on the 
one hand by his affection for pristine things and men, objects which, dur- 
ing Caesar's dictatorship, he loved to idealize, — and on the other hand, 
by a racking pain and sorrow in his ever renewed attempts to find some 
way to adjust himself to the fait accompli of a monarchy. 

His monograph on Cato was written in such a way as to excite Caesar's 
admiration of its literary power, but also to provoke the dictator to a 
literary rejoinder. 



THE OTHER SOURCES 291 

I Cicero was not without hopes that a new order of political forms would 
be devised in the end {e.g.^ "Fam." 4, 8), which would vouchsafe some 
measure of constitutional freedom. He was convinced that when the 
final victory of the Civil War once was won, some such settlement must be 
taken in hand by the victor himself. Again and again (" Fam.," 9, 17, 1) 
he views the old order as not merely moribund, but defunct. — We should 
not charge the Arpinate with hypocrisy for his effusive discourse on 
Caesar's political generosity (autumn 46 b.c, "Fam.," 4,4) in permitting 
the return of M. Marcellus. Cicero, was, as it were, carried off his feet 
by the dictator's magnanimity and, by a sudden impulse of his emotional 
temperament, broke his resolution of maintaining silence in the senate. 

On the other hand, after the Ides of March, Cicero was too deeply en- 
raged against monarchy as such, to be fair to the person of the slain mon- 
arch. (" Off.," 2, 23 ; 84 ; 3, 82 ; 1, 26 ; 112 ; '^ Divinat.," 2, 23.) 
\^ In the brilliant survey (2 "Phil.," 116) there is one note of churlish 
unfairness : " He had attached to himself his political opponents by the 
guise of clemency.'''' ^ It is true he had failed to truly gain many of them ; 
but the insincerity, indeed, was not in the dictator : it was in the timid 
and disconsolate orator no less than in the selfish and petty placemen, 
who, on the fatal morning, slunk into the portico of Pompey with their 
poniards concealed in their pencil boxes. 



Sallust2 (86-34) 

In his " Ilistorice,''' Sallust dealt with contemporary history, as covered 
by the years 78-67 b.c. Here Csesar could not yet have figured. All of 
his literary work was, in a manner, a result, I am convinced, of his turn- 
ing his back definitely upon political life, as w^ell as upon his own past, 
after the Ides of March. A tribune in 52 b.c, he made himself obnoxious 
to the aristocracy by his attempts to further the cause of unrest and disor- 
der after the homicide on the Appian Way. As his private life had been 
tainted with scandalous incidents, it was easy for the Censor Appius 
Claudius to strike Sallust's name from the list of the senate in 50 b.c. 
So placed and so discredited, he owed to Csesar both his political rehabili- 
tation and military employment, and after Thapsus (spring, 46 b.c), Caesar 
made him the first governor of Juba's old kingdom, now become the new 
province of Numidia. ("Bell. Afr.," 97.) Dio says (43, 8), "and (Cae- 
sar) turned it over to Sallust to rule, formally and expressedly so, actu- 
ally, however, to loot and ravage." ^ 

The inconsistency of this process of accumulating enormous riches, 

1 Adversaries clementise specie devinxerat. 

2 H. Jordan (" Plermes," 6, 210), an eminent critic of Sallust, claimed 
that Sallust should be read not as a historian but as an orator. Cf . also 
A. Schaefer, " Quellenkunde," § 32. 

3 Cf. Varro in "Gell.," 17, 18. 



292 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

when measured by the lofty morality of the historian, particularly of his 
introductions, made a strong and sometimes an odd impression upon his 
own generation. Our point, however, is the positive balance i and sanity 
of his judgments, especially in contrasting Cato and Csesar (de Coniura- 
tione Catilinse, 50 sqq.), quite in the manner of Thucydides. In Caesar's 
oration the most salient feature is equilibrium, cool and perfect self- 
possession, diplomatic and statesmanlike appreciation of the situation as 
it was on December 5, 63 ; diplomatic, too, in crediting his political ad- 
versaries with good motives. He can take large views, and fortify his 
points with well-chosen parallels from the past history of Rome. He also 
frankly disowns (51, 2) any belief in aught beyond dissolution ; death 
rather a soothing termination of all troubles. He was an Epicurean. I 
have referred to this speech in the proper place. His entire discourse, 
leading up to a motion which even Cicero, nineteen years later, called 
severe (*' Att.," 12, 21), characterizes the statesman no less than a certain 
humanity in Caesar. Nor is there the slightest trace in Sallust of en- 
deavoring to belittle the forceful consistency of Caesar's greatest political 
antagonist, Cato. To Sallust's own historical retrospect (53, 5-6), these 
two men approached most closely to the great men of that Rome which lay 
before the period of that decadence which was still on. In ch. 54 he enters 
upon the literary task of precise delineation in which he is so admirable. 

These rare lines were written when both men were dead. Caesar ex- 
celled (to Sallust's retrospection) in all those qualities through which a 
rising statesman gains ever new and wider support. Among these quali- 
ties were the faculties exerted in comity, kindliness, generosity, sympa- 
thy, affability ; to the advancement of his friends he was so devoted as to 
neglect his own interests. His munificence was boundless, and he was an 
asylum for those who were in distress. 

To the element of ambition his beneficiary, Sallust, refers in a some- 
what guarded manner: " He chose for himself {exoptabat) a great com- 
mand — clearly that beginning, in 58 b.c. — an army, a new imr,'^ where 
his eminence might brilliantly reveal itself." Here, then, is the virtual or 
implied admission, that the Keltic war was no imperial or political neces- 
sity, but rather an arena for Caesar's ambition. Also we have from Sal- 
lust's pen the insinuation that Caesar was an adept in trumping wealth 
with wealth, an adept in confronting political cliques with cliques organ- 
ized by himself. Also we read, and that not merely between the lines, 
that when we ascend from the lower levels of achievements and success 
to the higher, of moral excellence and fearless consistency, and of disdain 
for expediency and for aught but deep conviction, — there Cato dwelt, and 
dwelt alone. Such a testimonium animcB by an eminent Caesarian is 
doubly impressive. 

1 Momrasen is wide of the mark in conceiving Sallust's " Catiline " as 
an apology of Caesar. 

2 Perhaps novum bellum is here rather a war of novel features. 



THE OTHER SOURCES 293 



NiKOLAOS OF Damascus i 

This Syro-Grecian scholar was a courtier, an educator, an historian, 
and, above all, a man who curiously came in touch, in the course of his 
life, both with Octavian Augustus Csesar and with the court at Alex- 
andria : he is said to have taught the children of Antony and Cleo- 
patra {after Actium?). He was much also at the court of Herod the 
Great, and as late as 4 b.c, accompanied the latter's son Archelaos to 
Rome. Beside a general history in 144 books dedicated to Herod, he 
wrote a work on the education of Augustus, whose age was almost the 
same as his own, for Nikolaos was born in 64 b.c. From the " Education 
of Augustus," then, we may select data found in ch. 7 sqq. We learn 
that young Octavian habitually after his adoption, still called Caesar 
'uncle,' that, when his health was restored, he followed the latter into 
the Munda campaign in Spain (c. 10), and that he reported at headquar- 
ters when the dictator had already completed the seven months' cam- 
paign. The fact of adoption, however, was revealed to the youth only 
after the Ides of March, when the will was opened. The story of the 
conspiracy and of the assassination is told in chs. 19-24. He blunders in 
setting down Decimus Brutus as one of the former Pompeians. He empha- 
sizes Caesar's conciliatory temperament as an element of his character. 

The motives of the accomplices are specifically elucidated, some indi- 
vidually, some by entire classes (c. 19). We may readily assume that 
here we meet the current views as held in the circles of Augustus him- 
self, and this exposition is not surpassed by any other presentation within 
the entire range of the classical tradition now extant. To be the Ccesaris 
ultor 2 was the first great task of Caesar's heir, and the greatest and full- 
est possible knowledge of the subject must, in the generation after the 
Ides of March, have been in the possession of Augustus, whose beneficiary 
the Syrohellenic philosopher seems to have been. The Excessive Honors 
were a part of the conspirators' design (20). Caesar's paternity of Cleo- 
patra's child is presented as a mere malevolent rumor and aspersion. 
The relation of the Lupercalia matter differs greatly from that of Cicero's 
"Second Philippic." The detail almost everywhere is most impressive. 
The discontinuance of any bodyguard (22) is ascribed to the hypocritical 
appeals of the accomplices. The details of strokes, blows, and position 
are not excelled for their precision. May we not assume that in the 
archives of Augustus there was some official record, taken down even 
before the expiration of 43 b.c, a protocol indeed prepared as a corollary 

1 O. E. Schmidt, " Die letzten Kampfe der romischen Republik," 1884. 
A. Schaefer, " Quellenkunde," § 48. Midler, " Fragm. Hist. Graecorum," 
vol. 3. — The article in Suidas has been revised, " lih. Mus.," 35, 63, 
where Daub suggests: rod I^e^aa-Tov Kalaapos dycjyrj- — Nikolaos is not 
over-familiar with Roman antiquities : v. in ch. 6 his references to the 
Feri(E Latince. 

2 Horace, "Carm.," I., 2. 



294 ANNALS OF CiESAR 

or sequence of the Lex Pedia de Interfectoribus Cozsaris.^ Clearly there 
was a trial, although most of the defendants did not heed the summons, 
being beyond Italy. In the indictment many of the details were probably 
incorporated. 



ASINIUS POLLIO 

This noted man of affairs, military commander, provincial governor, 
author, critic, and patron of letters, was born in 76 e.g. and died in 5 a.d., 
an octogenarian. His ancestors probably were of the noted Asinii of 
Teate, in the district of the Marrucini, in central Italy. His principles 
and temperament seem to have been the very antithesis to that corruption 
in which the gilded youth (Catiline, later Clodius, Cselius, Curio, Antony, 
Dolabella, etc.) excelled. Educated in Rome and later a student in 
Athens, he gained notice in 54 b.c. as an orator. He attacked a political 
servitor of Pompey, and later on the keen judgment of Caesar, who rec- 
ognized and strove to utilize every genuine talent, afforded him employ- 
ment and swift promotion. PoUio deplored the outbreak of the Civil 
War. He himself says that temperament and inclination drew him toward 
a literary life (" Fam.," 10, 31). He had personal enemies in both par- 
ties. His choice of Caesar's party was determined by expediency. In a 
short time his intimacy with Caesar was as great as that of Caesar's oldes*. 
friends. His subsequent (and consequent) loyalty to Caesar was deep and 
true. As a younger man he considered association with Cicero bliss ; 
later, as his own powers grew, he assumed a hypercritical and haughty 
attitude in every direction. Even in practical problems of political 
adaptation he maintained a striking measure of self-respect. His style 
was rough and abrupt ; the polished cadences of Cicero appealed not to 
his temperament. 2 

In the maturity of his powers, certainly not before Actium, perhaps, 
as A. Kiessling suggests, not long before the publication of Horace's first 
three books of Odes, in 23 b.c, did Asinius publish his work on the Civil 
War, specimens of which probably in public readings (" recitationes ") 
reached the public. These probably prompted Horace to write Ode II, 1, 
and place it first in the Second Scroll. 

I will briefly state my conclusions as regards the seventeen books 
(Suidas) of his " Historice,''' i.e., History of his own Time. This contem- 
porary history, however, beginning with the consulate of Afranius and 
Metellus (60 e.g.), clearly dealt with th-e Civil War chiefly. Tliis year he 
chose as the initial point. His reason for so doing doubtlessly, was the 
fact that in this year the great pact of Pompey, Crassus, and Caesar was 

1 Veil., 2, 69. Liv., 120 : Caesar (more exactly Pedius) legem tulit de 
quaestione habenda in eos, quorum opera pater occisus esset, postulatique 
ea lege M. Brutus, C. Cassius, D. Brutus absentes damnati sunt. 

2 Senec, "Ep.," 100, 7 ; Quintil., 10, 1, 113; Tacit., "Dial.," 21. 



THE OTHER SOURCES 295 

formed : the genetic point of the Civil War. When Horace wrote 
Ode n, 1, Pollio perhaps had published his work up to the death of Cato 
(46 B.C.). The parallel of Plutarch, " Caes.," 32, and Appian, b.c. 2, 36, 
postulates Pollio as the common ultimate original source, even if not 
directly so. It was the Rubicon incident where Pollio (no small mark of 
Caesar's trust) was present.^ Plutarch cites Asinius outright for certain de- 
tails of figures (Pharsalos) and recorded utterance ("Pomp.," 72 ; " Caes.," 
46). The latter is especially significant. Suetonius confirms the citation 
of Caesar's utterance as the latter moved among the dead and dying within 
Pompey's stockade at Pharsalos. The inference seems to be that the 
young staff officer (soon to be among Caesar's lieutenants), not long after 
his appointment, conceived the plan of close observation of Caesar's acts 
and utterances. In a young man of strong literary aspirations nothing is 
more natural. An incident of a desperate situation in the Thapsus cam- 
paign, in which Pollio supported Caesar, is related by Plutarch ("Caes.," 
52). The incident also of Caesar's turning the aquilifer around (ib.) is 
probably from the same source. Cato's quitting Sicily in 49 b.c, and 
yielding to Pollio is related by Plutarch, " Cato Min.," 53. The onset of 
young Pompey's legions at Mtinda, said Pollio (Suet., " Caes.," 55), was 
so sharp and quick, that Caesar had no time to make his customary appeal 
to his own troops. 

Appian presents the Cato-Pollio-Sicily matter (2, 40) with specific 
utterances. He notes also Asinius' escape from the catastrophe of Curio 
in 49 B.C., and the further acts and efforts of Asinius to save the rem- 
nants of Caesar's forces (2, 46). The number of the slain at Pharsalos is 
given after Pollio (2, 82). Whether Appian knew him through Livy, or 
directly, for tlie further history of the Civil War to Caesar's death, can- 
not now be conclusively determined. The last citation of his name by 
Appian is in connection with the famous conference of Brundisium. 
("B.C.," 5,64.) 

How far did Pollio go down ? We are not sure. Was it to Philippi, 
42 B.C. ? It is puzzling to learn from an utterance of the historian Cre- 
mutius Cordus, 25 a.d., in the reign of Tiberius that Asinius Pollio was 
candid enough to speak with positive respect of Brutus and Cassius. 
(Tac, "Annal.," 4, 34.) If this was in connection with the Ides of 
March, it would, indeed, be a moral and a psychological riddle. Perhaps 
it was in connection with the campaign of Philippi, 

Pollio wrote of the Rhine (Strabo, C, 4, p. 249, a), i.e., he traversed 
Caesar's Gallic wars. The judgment cited by Suetonius ("Caes.," 56) is 
severe : he said the composition of the Commentarii was defective in two 
ways : there was a lack of exactness, and further, there were flaws on 
the score of truth, because Caesar uncritically {temere) believed most 

1 Fronde's objections are based not on any critical study of the sources, 
which he has not made, but rather on Fronde's general notion of Caesar's 
character, which is Fronde's own. Caesar was not taciturn among his 
friends. 



296 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

things, both those carried out through others and those by himself, or set 
them down faultily or even by lapse of memory, and he (Pollio) thought 
that Caesar intended to recast and to correct them. 

Clearly Pollio, who was great enough to decline to accompany Octavian 
into the campaign of Actium, Pollio, who had been consul and trmmpha- 
tor, and who, as an orator and master of Latin, hesitated not to measure 
himself even against a Cicero, was a very different man when he wrote 
his '■'■ Historice,'''' a very different critic from the young staff-officer of 
Rubicon and Pharsalos, and that not only in his own estimation. 

[Drumann has a special biography of Pollio. There is a special mono- 
graph by Kornemann, v. also Sihler, Am. Philol. Association, Proceed- 
ings for 1901. 0. E. Schmidt, " Der Ausbruch des Biirgerkrieges im Jahre 
49 vor Chr.," Rh. Mus., 47, p. 241. Cf. also G. TJiouret: " be Cicerone, 
Asinio Pollione, C. Oppio Rerum Csesarianarum Scriptoribus." This is 
of the most industrious type of a German Seminararbeit (Leipziger 
Studien, vol. 1, 1878). There is much reading, much matter, but the 
logic of Thouret is often far from convincing. H. Peter in his " Frag- 
menta," while he, e.g., makes enormous citations from Dionysius of 
Halicarnassus to establish " fragments " of Fabius Pictor, is over-critical 
in the admission of matter derivable, at least, from the pen of Asinius 
Pollio. —Further we may cite Schanz, "Rom. Lit. Gesch.," §216-217. 
Gardtliaiisen, "Augustus I," p. 109. Cic, "Fam.," 10, 31 : March 16, 
from Corduba. " Fam.," 10, 33, end of May. " Fam.," 19, 33, Corduba, 
June 8, 43 b.c. : Pollio wrote plays even in Spain. That Pollio was in 
Spain in the Miinda campaign is evident from Cic, "Att.," 12, 38; 
13, 21.] 



LiVT 

Titus Livius was born in Patavium (Padua) in Venetia, in the memo- 
rable year 59, the year of Csesar and Bibulus, being four years younger 
than Augustus and sixteen years younger than Pollio. 

The first book of this great national history seems to have been com- 
posed sometime between 29 and 25 b.c. Perhaps he had been grammati- 
cus or rhetor before he began to wTite history. His extreme devotion to 
Cicero 1 ("Quintil.," 10, 1, 39) makes this probable : the orations in his 
work no less. 

If, then, the Paduan began his comprehensive work on the entire his- 
tory of Rome after 29 b.c, i.e., after his thirtieth year, and wrote his 
one hundred and forty-second book after 9 a.d., i.e., after his sixty- 
eighth year, we are confronted by a work which in an exceptional way 

1 His son-in-law, L. Magius, was a rhetor: Seneca, "Controv.," 10, 
prasf. 2. The '■'■ Fragmenta,'''' edited by Weissenborn, B. G. Teubner, 
1892, are really passages from Orosius, Plutarch, Seneca rhet. and various 
scholiasts and grammatici, with but a slender total of actual citation of 
Livy's text. " T. Livii Periochae," with lulius Obsequens, ed. Otto 
Jahn 1853. Cf. pp. 134-136, which confirm Plutarch as transcriber of 
Livy. 



THE OTHER SOURCES 297 

constituted the achievemeut of a lifetime. He was ten when Caesar 
drove across the Rubicon. Eight books were devoted to the period 
covering Ciesar's Civil War and ending with the Ides of March : eight 
books devoted to the events of a little more than five years. 

A rough estimate, then, of the whole, would permit us to say that Livy 
composed about three and a half books each year, and that when he had 
reached what we may call the history of his own time, viz., the beginning 
of the Civil War, he was probably not less than sixty years old. The 
better past had naturally become a part of his very life. Toe young to be 
an active partisan, and by his very choice of life given to observation 
and reflection, without the courtier's protestation of a new felicity such as 
we meet in Vergil and Horace, he is not an enthusiast for the political 
outcome of it all. As for the lost books (and of these also are the Eight 
books of the Civil War) specialists in Livy, like Professor Henry A. 
Sanders ^ of Ann Arbor, conclude that the present Summaries are them- 
selves abstracts of a fuller Epitome Liviana, which latter perhaps was 
composed as early as the reign of Tiberius, or in the generation after 
the death of the author himself. 

Mommsen once wrote :^ "The Annals of Livy, in the epoch of the 
decline, were rated not as a history, but as the history of the Roman 
Republic. Even in the better imperial period (i.e., of historiography) 
Livy was the main source for Greeks and Romans." 

So deeply did the Paduan grieve at the disruption, both moral and 
political, of the Civil War, so gladly did he turn away from the mournful 
present, that the narrative of the Older Rome was to him an anodyne, at 
least for a while. 

As for Livy's own time, i.e., the golden age of Augustus Caesar (as the 
pensionaries of that emperor would have their times believe), this idealist 
dissents. In fact, he was singularly independent of that monarch as far 
as the glorification of the dictator was concerned. In the broken tradi- 
tion available, we observe, first, that Livy extolled Pompey and that he 
was unfriendly to Caesar. It is Livy's fearlessness and candor as an 
historian under Augustus which the senator and historian Cremutius 
Cordus extolled: extolled under Tiberius (Tacit., "Annals," 4, 34). 
Evidently Augustus was not pleased, and charged the national historian 
with bias and partisanship. (We must briefly return to this point.) 
Somewhere in his work, perhaps under the year 100 b.c, perhaps under 
60 B.C., he stopped to return to the much mooted question, whether it 
would have been more to the advantage of Rome, if Caesar had never 
lived, or the opposite. (Seneca, "Nat. Quaest.," 5, 18, 4.) This may 

1 Cf. also his paper : "The Oxyrhynchus Epitome of Livy and Rein- 
hold's Chronicon," Amer. Philol. Association, 1905; also: "The Lost 
Epitome of Livy," in "Roman Historical Sources and Institutions," edited 
by Henry A. Sanders, IVIacmillan. 1904. Our present Periochae bear ear- 
marks, certainly, of the Silver Latinity. (E. G. S.) 

2 (Philologus, 1886, p. 510) in a treatise of 1861. 



298 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

have been a theme for debate in the controversice of the rhetorical 
schools. Livy's description of Cicero's death (preserved by the elder 
Seneca, "Suas," 6, 17, sqq.) betokens a devotion on Livy's part not ex- 
celled by Quintilian himself. A Ciceronian, indeed, must we call our his- 
torian. And when one yields oneself to the bitterness of the Arpinate, 
one cannot but become unfriendly to the dictator. 

In Hadrian's time probably, Florus, a rhetor, wrote: " Epitomse de 
Tito Livio bellorum omnium, Annorum DCC," of which 2, 13, presents 
the Civil War of Caesar and Pompey, and not a little of Livy's general 
spirit and treatment seems to have been transcribed. The Civil War was 
intrinsically wrong. It was due to the insanity {furor) of Csesar and 
Pompey. The madness of Marius and Sulla had been a prelude, Sulla's 
withering storm, at least, had not exceeded the confines of Italy. Livy 
(109) seems to have begun with a moralizing analysis of the underlying 
causes: chief among these was excessive prosperity. Livy, too, consid- 
ered 60 B.C. as the genetic point: he analyzed the motives of each mem- 
ber of the Great Pact. The year 51, with the consulate of M. Marcellus, 
was conceived as that year in which the actual breach between the two 
dynasts was consummated. The question of special privilege for Csesar, 
the plehiscitum of the ten tribunes, Pompey at first allowing the enact- 
ment, and later opposing it, all was told pretty much in the same manner 
as we, mainly from the letters of Caelius to Cicero, presented it. We 
have no desire to go over the whole matter once more, but again and 
again we feel inclined to say that Csesar is treated somewhat bluntly, 
nay, brusquely, as one as to whose deeper motives Livy had no illusions 
whatever. If Pompey only (Floras, 2, 13, 42-43) had remained in his 
dominant position after Dyrrachium ! The beauty of Cleopatra was 
noted. This, under Augustus, probably was a theme impossible to pur- 
sue very far. Csesar's purple paludamentum in the Nile (ib., §59), as 
well as the schoolboy king's golden corselet, crop up in later transcrip- 
tions from Livy, such as Eutropius and Orosius. The Lupercalia inci- 
dent is left open. On the whole, we may be quite sure that the elements 
of severe treatment of Ctesar, or the placing of emphasis upon such data 
as bore against his fame, were quite plentiful in Livy ; they crop up in 
Plutarch, Appian, and Dio. The rhetorician Valerius Maximus (reign of 
Tiberius) drew much from Livy, but personally was prostrate before 
Julius as founder of the dynasty. 



Velleius Paterculus 1 

'' This historian was a military officer under Tiberius and was advanced 
to the prsetorship by the latter in 15 a.d. He published his two books of 
Historioe, Bomanoe in 80 a.d., before the fall of Seianus. His culture, on 

1 Cf. edition by Bobinson Ellis, Clarendon Press, Oxford. Article by 
E. G. Sihler in "Proceedings of American Philol. Association for 1894." 



THE OTHER SOURCES 299 

the formal side, was largely that attainable by the study of oratory and 
other letters. He stands in awe before the Julian dynasty as such. His 
faculty of characterization, in spite of a certain effusiveness of manner, is 
no mean one. He seems to have transcribed from Oppius in relating, 
e.gr., the adventure of the earlier Caesar with the pirates. He, too (2, 44), 
makes the Triumvirate the genetic point of the Civil War. He gives 
summaries of figures, as, e.g.^ of one million slain in the Gallic wars (2, 
47), placing this to Csesar's credit. The sole consulate of Pompey (52 
B.C.), is taken as the point of estrangement from Csesar. Frequently 
Velleius seems to check his pen, so as not to make a point against Caesar, 
as when, e.g.^ he leaves it undecided whether Curio received a certain 
enormous sum from Caesar (2, 48). In telling striking incidents Velleius 
honors Csesar's motives. He blunders as to date of the earlier four 
triumphs, placing these, also, after Munda (2, 56). The LupercaJia 
matter he considers unwise. The conspiracy is related very briefly, but 
temperately. 



LUCAN 1 

'■"xM. Annseus Lucanus (39-65 a.d.), a nephew of Seneca, wrote under 
Nero. It is quite obvious that the fulminations of so young a person 
against Caesar as destroyer of the (so-called) republic, must, after all, be 
taken seriously when we consider the fervor of the young stoic and that 
he actually wrote under Nero, in fact dedicates this epic to that imperial 
versifier. Rhetorical declamation, however, has here, albeit clothed in 
pompous hexameters, run riot, and the young Homer has borrowed pig- 
ments from many sources. The entire Civil War for him, too (as to Livy), 
is due to insanity (furor, 1, 8). Apart from the personal motives of the 
Three, there was, also, the underlying cause of luxury and decadence (1, 
160 sqq). Livy again. But in many details there is a gorgeous imagery 
painted with entire artistic freedom not any more restrained than that of 
-^Eschylus : such is the ethnological and geographical parade of sonant 
nomenclature. This, together with Greek mythology, Etruscan super- 
stition and Stoic ethics is brewed in a veritable cauldron filled with 
incongruous ingredients. All his lore and learning are worked into this 
declamation, which is sustained at a pitch of tiresome intensity. While 
the poet, in a manner, would have Pompey impersonate the Republic and 
Freedom, Csesar is really the central figure. When the precocious youth 
perished in the Pisonian conspiracy, he had published but three books of 
his Epic. These reached the naval victory of Decimus Brutus at Massilia. 
The tenth book now ends with the Alexandrine episode left incomplete. 

1 V. HeitlancVs edition, London, 1887. Bernadotte Perrin in American 
Journal of Philology, Vol. VI, 1884, compares Lucan, 7, 326-333, with 
Appian, b.c, 2, 74. Hosius on Lucan's sources, Rh. Mus., 48, 380 sqq., 
claims that the poet used chiefly Livy, though for battle scenery he freely 
availed himself even of Curtius. 



300 ANNALS OF CESAR 

It seems from the dedication to Nero (1, 38 sqq.), that the plan of the work 
included everything up to Actium. To separate the historical narrative 
from traditional stuff or ballast of epical art alluded to above, is no slight 
task. Lucan's personal and psychological analysis of Caesar's sincerity is 
very unfavorable throughout. Caesar, e.g. , when confronted with the head 
of Pompey, is presented as a hypocrite. — If young Lucan had lived to 
carry on his work to Actium, it would probably have reached a bulk ex- 
ceeding that of Iliad plus Odyssey. That this became impossible through 
the catastrophe of 65 a.d. , is at least one bright feature in that dark record. 



C. Suetonius Tranquillus i 

This Roman antiquarian and author, who wrote under Trajan and 
Hadrian, had a school in Rome about 100 a.d. He was a schoolmaster 
(dominus scholasticus, Pliny, "Ep.," 1, 24), who sought recreation from 
his arduous professional labors by buying a little place a few miles out. 
His pleading in courts would seem to have been a rarer incident (ib., 1, 8). 
His chief activities then clustered about his being a grammaticus : i.e., 
they were a combination of being an instructor in language, in literary 
forms and literary biographies, with almost everything that might be 
called antiquities. He wrote about the games (children's games) of the 
Greeks ; about Roman spectacles and public games, on the Roman Year, 
on Cicero's Republic, a rejoinder to Didymos, on personal names, on 
forms of curses ; de viris illustribus (this included, also, literary biogra- 
phies as well as the extant books Be Grammaticis and De Bhetoribus) . 
He ranks, therefore, with the elder Pliny and Varro,^ as an antiquarian 
and exact collector of less familiar data. In his biographies of the 
"Twelve Caesars," we are rejoiced to find, for once, an utter absence of 
rhetoric and all kindred artificiality. These features, too, are patent in 
his biography of Caesar, and stamp it as a very notable production. When 
we have made allowance for his extraordinary condensation of matter, 
we will grant him a very good place in ancient historiography. The 
"Caesars" were published in 120 a.d. 

- -- He is no philosopher, no statesman nor judge of statesmen, not even a 
political writer, but, be it spoken with all due humility, ^ he is at least a 
scholar. His biography of the first emperor is constructed thus (the 
initial portion is lost). His youth, first marriage, behavior in Sulla's Pro- 
scriptions, first military service, first forensic and political orations, re- 
newal of rhetorical training, second return to Rome, military tribuneship, 

1 Article in Suidas, s. v., TpdyKyXXos ; cf. Roth, Introduction (pp. ix- 
xvi), 

2 ' ' Der bedeutendste Philolog und Antiquar seiner Zeit, ein wtirdiger 
Nachfolger Varros." ... C. Wachsmuth, Einleitung in das Studium der 
alten Geschichte, 1895. 

3 For in our land the eyes of youth are almost feverishly fixed on the 
two types of eminence, the financier and the politician. 



THE OTHER SOURCES 301 

qusestorship, sedileship, praetorship, provincial imperium in Further Spain, 
consulship, Gallic proconsulate, the gathering crisis during the consu- 
lar year of M. Marcellus, 51 b.c. (c. 28), and of the next one (c. 29), 
outbreak of Civil War (31), the whole of which is related in six brief 
chapters. Then (37 sqq.) follow triumphs, gifts, bounties, various adminis- 
trative acts and reforms (40-44). Next are set down his physical person, 
habits of dress and domestic luxury, morality and amatory intrigues, con- 
vivial habits, financial integrity, or rather corruption ; then follow (55 sq.) 
his rhetorical training and literary production ; his endurance and phys- 
ical energy ; his disregard (59) of current superstitions, his character as 
commander and disciplinarian (60-70) , his nobler qualities and tempera- 
mental virtues (72-75). At this point the historical narrative proper is 
resumed. The acts of the last part of his life are related as acts justify- 
ing the conspiracy and the assassiyiation (82), followed by the funeral 
and related matters. While Suetonius has read the writings of Caesar's 
admirers, such as Hirtius (56), Oppius (52, 72), and Balbus (81), he 
evidently is swayed, and, indeed, very strongly swayed, by political and 
historical writers of the opposite party. Such were Tanusius Geminus 
(9; cf. Plut., "Cffis.," 22), M. Actorius JVaso (9, 52), and T. Ampius 
Balbus (77). All three writers were not content to gather evil reports 
and evil facts, but seem to have done their uttermost to give an unfavor- 
able interpretation of all acts which were open to more than one interpre- 
tation. The summaries of the Gallic war, e.g., were conceived in an odious 
and belittling spirit. So, too, are described his private morality and his 
enormous appropriation of funds (49-54), with the propelling motive of 
avarice. (Dio teems with similar data.) 

'" As for T. Ampius Balbus, he was a partisan of Pompey, and owed all 
his political preferment to that dynast. In 46, between the Thapsus cam- 
paign and that of Munda, when Cicero ("Fam.," 6, 12, 5) endeavored to 
gain for him a pardon and return from exile, he seems to have been en- 
gaged in historical study. Caesar spared him not in his own account of 
the Civil War, telling how Ampius (during 48) had made preparation to 
loot the treasure in the temple of the Ephesian Artemis. ("B. C," 3, 
105.) Suetonius, 54, seems to contain the rejoinder of Ampius. 
" In conclusion, we must not overlook the fact that this very feature in 
Suetonius, viz. , this enormous condensation, betokens very positive re- 
flection. 



/ 



Plutarch of Ch^ronea 

He lived from about 45 a.d. to 127. All of his Roman Lives were writ- 
ten during the reign of Trajan (98-117). Some of them were dedicated 
to Sosius Senecio,^ who was consul four times under that emperor. It 

1 B. Volkmanrij Leben u. Schriften des Plut. von Chaeronea, Berlin, 
1869, p. 35 sqq. 



302 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

was in Eome only when he was well advanced in life, that he studied 
Latin (Demosth. 2) . He did not dare to weigh the technical and literary 
side of Cicero's eloquence. Evidently he never acquired such a mastery 
of Latin idiom as to feel it with direct force and truth. Plutarch had 
been in Rome, also, in the last years of Vespasian. His general view of 
the transition (Pomp. 75) of the Roman government into a monarchy 
was one of approval. That transition he considered providential. Not 
with malice or prejudice did he write a biography of Csesar. While he 
presented Caesar in parallel with Alexander, he seems to have abstained 
from any comparative survey ((rijyKpi<xis) : which, indeed, would have been 
quite difficult and somewhat pointless. There are various confusions in 
Plutarch's relation of Caesar's youth, e.g., of Sulla's granting him pardon, 
of his capture by the pirates (1-2), of his study under Molo at Rhodes (3), 
and of the orations against Dolabella and Antony (4). He is in error in 
pointing to Cicero as the one who was first to penetrate into the deeper 
ambition of Caesar (4, 4) ; further on he himself assigns this credit to 
Cato (13, 2 ; 14, 5). The question of Caesar's complicity with Catiline he 
leaves undecided (7, 4). The Bona Dea scandal is given with impressive 
detail (9-10). In going to Spain (61 b.c.) Caesar certainly did not cross 
the Alps (11). The view held by most people, that the breach of Caesar 
and Pompey (13, 3) caused the Civil War, Plutarch calls erroneous. That 
cause was the Triumvirate, an achievement of Caesar's. (Pollio and 
Livy took the same view.) Cato, alone, penetrated the import of this 
pact. So far the biography deals gently with Caesar ; but the consulate 
(14) is treated quite severely. Probably Oppius was no longer at his elbow. 
Besides Oppius, Plutarch positively knew, or at least inspected, Pollio, 
Caesar's "Anticato," Cicero's "Cato," Cicero " de Consulatu suo" (8, 
3), the Commentarii both of Gallic and Civil War, Tiro's " Witty Say- 
ings of Cicero," the " Bellum Africum." I shall not attempt to establish 
in detail conjectures which, at all events, cannot be raised to the point of 
conclusiveness, let alone esclusiveness. Plutarch's fundamental erudition 
and reading up to middle life were Greek. This particular biography, I 
believe, was composed with considerable expedition. In the great libra- 
ries of Rome he could easily and promptly gain a survey of incidental 
bibliography without reading every scroll through. We must not forget, 
also, that he wrote other biographies of this very period, viz., Brutus 
(done before), Crassus, Cato, Pompey, Cicero, LucuUus. There is lacking 
in Plutarch a firm and thoroughly consistent grasp of Caesar's political 
personality. On the other hand, there is discoverable no bias of excessive 
partisanship, whether for praise or blame. At the same time, we cannot 
very well say that Plutarch strove to emancipate himself from his sources 
in such a way as to use them critically. He confuses various data as to 
sequence : in addition to the errors noted before, we observe the follow- 
ing : he seems to confound the consuls of 51 and 50 (29, 1) ; he omits the 
Gallic triumph (55, 1); he blunders as to the reason why Thapsus was 
chosen for the decisive battle (63, 1) ; he makes the incident of the pro- 



THE OTHER SOURCES 303 

testing tribunes, Marullus and Caesetius, consequent upon the Lupercalia 
incident of Feb. 15, 44 b.c. (61, 4); in the story of the assassination (the 
incident of Antony's detention outside), he confounds Decimus Brutus 
with Trebonius (66, 3) . These are signs of haste, I believe. A certain 
haste, too, seems to be revealed by Plutarch's faulty spelling of some 
proper nouns : such as Usipai and Tencteritai for Usipetes and Tencteri ; 
of Carnutini for Carnutes ; of (the centurion at Pharsalos) Crassinius 
for Crastinus. In Pomp., 71, he (or the copyist?) even wrote Crassi- 
anus. Such being the case, viz., that he could not take time to thor- 
oughly master specific writings, it would seem the more natural to 
assume Plutarch made good and full use of the great national history 
of Livy, really a book quite indispensable for his purpose. Not only 
did he use Livy where he names him outright (38, 3 ; 44, 5-6 ; 47, 1, 
2; 56, 3; 63, 6), but we may ascribe to Livy's influence the critical 
judgments of Ctesar's policies and politics. Such are the almost abusive 
sketch of Caesar's consular year (14 sq.) already mentioned; the wealth 
which Csesar gained from Further Spain as propraetor (12, 2); the setting 
of Clodius against Cicero (14, 1) ; how he deceived Pompey (20, 2) ; the 
almost cynical report of the Conference of Luca, and how he reimbursed 
himself for his corruption of senators (21-22) ; Caesar's long-established 
purpose of overthrowing Pompey (28, 1) ; the fool friends of Pompey at 
the outbreak of the Civil AVar (29, 3-4) ; Caesar's specious claims as over 
against Pompey (30, 1) ; the manner in which Caesar helped himself to 
the treasure in the cerarium sanctius at Rome, with the vain opposition 
of the tribune Metellus (35, 3) ; the excess of honors as leading up to his 
fall (57, 2 ; 5). 

The personal manner of Plutarch comes before us when he stops for 
psychological digression in which he is so admirable : as when he weighs 
Caesar's generous utterance concerning Cato's death, against the bitter 
and truculent spirit of Caesar's own Anticato, or when Cassius, the 
Epicurean, turns to Pompey 's spirit in a kind of aspiration or prayer 
(66, 2). 

If we were compelled to choose between Suetonius and Plutarch, if we 
were condemned to lose one of these biographies, as a student of Roman 
Institutions and Roman History, I would unhesitatingly vote to save 
Suetonius. 



Appian of Alexandria ^ 

'^Appian was a native of Alexandria, and came to Rome during the 
reign of Hadrian, i.e., before 138 a.d. In the capital he was a pleader in 

1 An excellent translation in the Bohn series by Mr. Horace White of 
New York, with an introduction. The German specialist. Professor 
Schwartz in Pauly-Wissowa s.v. Appian, especially columns 226, 227, 
228. L. Mendelssohn in "Rh. Mus.," 31, 201 sqq. Wachsmuth, Emlei- 
tung, etc., pp. 601 sqq. 



304 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

the Eoman courts. At once it is obvious that when later on he took up 
Roman historiography he would not shrink from free use of Latin books 
as such. Through Fronto he received the post of procurator^ i.e.,, im- 
perial financial administrator in a province. This was the latter and the 
more leisurely part of his career. During this time, it seems, he composed 
his Poj/xatKci, a work of twenty-four books, much less detailed than Livy, 
or the later Dio. So as to maintain a certain unity in the periods, he 
determined upon a series of special monographs, each dealing with one 
definite nationality or state, as it came into contact, or into war, with 
the Roman government. Book 1 dealt with the regal period. Then fol- 
lowed the war with the "Italians" (Latins), with the Samnites, Gauls, 
Sicily and other islands, with Spain, with Hannibal, with Africa {Kl^vkt}), 
with Macedon and Illyria, with Greece, with Syria, with Mithridates. 
These were the first twelve books. The next five (really 13-17) dealt 
with the Civil Wars, no less, indeed, wath the domestic movements of 
disintegration, so that here the reforms of the Gracchi, no less than the 
Catilinarian movements, had their place also. 

That four entire books were set apart for the Egyptian part of Roman 
history seems excessive : but this was undoubtedly due to the author's 
nativity. One was to learn how each nation or state had passed under 
Roman sovereignty. In the main it is a military history. And such is 
never very luminous unless told by a military author who is himself no 
mean expert in war. Appian deliberately avoided, or made it no part of 
his design (" Procem.," 13), to be exact in chronological matters. To his 
perception, the period of the Civil Wars was marked off by the personali- 
ties of the military leaders, viz. (" Procem.," 14), Marius and Sulla, Pom- 
pey and Csesar, Antony and Octavianus Caesar. Even more indifferent 
as to chronological precision is Appian in giving clews to the authors 
transcribed or used in the Civil Wars, Like Dio, he is a monarchist by 
conviction and not an admirer of the so-called Republicans of Caesar's 
time. Still, when we come to his actual delineation of this period, he is 
by no means a Csesarian. His judgments often have a refreshing direct- 
ness, they are vigorous and clear-cut. Caesar was an adept in assuming 
a role (2, 11). 

There is often revealed what I might call psychological pragmatism. 
Plutarch never gained so close a vision. But to return : if we cannot, 
as a rule, lay our hand upon Appian's sources, we are confronted again 
and again by a spirit censorious and severe in the valuation of Cae- 
sar's acts, but even more of Caesar's motives and the underlying ele- 
ments of his soul and conscience. This cannot possibly be due to 
Pollio. Thus Caesar (2, 10) was insincere in breaking with the senate 
about his agrarian law. That the senate, during the rest of Caesar's 
consular year, was put out of function, is a curious and certainly an 
unfriendly exaggeration. 

The Gallic wars were really reserved for the Keltic book ; there are 
mere shreds left, but even these show exactly, in a certain place, the un- 



THE OTHER SOURCES 305 

friendly bias such as we meet in Plutarch (22) and in Suetonius. He 
speate also, specifically, of the wealth which Caesar derived from his 
Gallic imperium (2, 17) : great sums went to Rome. Appian (like Dio) 
drifts upon the Luca settlements without naming Luca: his treatment 
resembles in spirit that of Plutarch ("Ctes.," 22; "Crass.," 14). He 
blunders in saying that Caesar requested of the senate some small exten- 
sion of his proconsulate (2, 25). As for the consuls of 61, C^sar could 
not buy M. Marcellus, but he did buy ^milius Paulus for fifteen hundred 
talents to be neutral, and the tribune Curio for a much greater sum to 
cooperate with him actively. 

The recording of prodigia at critical points perhaps points to Livy, 
who was particularly explicit in copying the official records of such 
matters (2, 36). 

\ The close resemblance of Appian to Plutarch in the Epirote and in the 
Thessalian campaign is impressive. But I am more inclined to believe 
that citation of Asinius Pollio by both was at second hand. Livy's splendid 
national work was classic and victorious (like Pheidias's statuary) on its 
first appearance. Why should it not have pushed into a certain obscurity 
the crabbed style of Pollio ? 

The regretful censure of Pompey for not crossing to Italy after the 
events of Dyrrachium mmj point to Livy.i The prodigia, again, in Pom- 
pey"s camp, before Pharsalos (2, 68), identical with Plutarch's report, 
definitely point to Livy as the common source. For the forces in that 
battle Appian presents three versions, but names no single authority. 
On the whole I am convinced that Livy, who cited Pollio for certain 
specific detail, was the main base both of Appian and Plutarch: at the 
conclusion of Pharsalos the essential identity of these two, even down to 
verbal concordance, is remarkable. The details of the assassination are 
precisely the same in Appian (2, 84) as in Plutarch. The reflection on 
his tragic death and the survey of his extraordinary career, from his 
twenty-third to his fifty-sixth year, points to Livy, who is fond of making 
such valuations when taking leave of the greater figures. Now Appian 
personally, as Wachsmuth observes, was a man of little personal reflec- 
tion, a man of positive paucity of ideas : these passages then, of valuation 
and retrospect, even more strongly than the relation of facts, point to his 
authority : again probably to Livy. The epigrammatic turn, above all, in 
the final sentence (2, 86) cannot possibly be credited to Appian personally 
and directly. The surrender of Cassius to Csesar in the Hellespont is 
called base (2, 88) : Livy again, never Asinius. To this we may add the 
noble characterization of Cato (2, 59). Certain gross blunders in Appian 
show that no matter how excellent and substantial his sources, he worked 
and wrote in a hurry. Thus in the Mtinda campaign, culminating in the 
great battle of March 17, 45 b.c, he places it by the walls of Corduba, 
without even naming Miinda. Neither is Thapsus mentioned in the de- 

1 Compare Floras, 2, 13, 42-43. 



306 ANNALS OF CAESAR 

scription (2, 97) of that great contest. In the conspiracy Brutus, about 
41 years old, is called a youth (veadas) (2, 112). 



r 



Cassius Dig Cocceianus (about 155-235 a.d.) 

[The most elaborate study of Dio and parallels, with the constant 
endeavor to reestablish Livy's lost presentation thereby, is found in the 
Wissowa article by Schwartz. The industry of this scholar is great, but 
of course one does not get much beyond the possible, sometimes into the 
probable or plausible. There is too little left traceable in the department 
of verbal and phraseological resemblance, too little that has the force of 
the palpable. Schwartz in col. 1707 makes a very interesting observa- 
tion : no agreement of Cassar and Dio as against Livy has as yet been 
pointed out, but many agreements of Dio and Livy as against Ccesar. 
Schwartz is convinced that Livy sharply characterized the Gallic cam- 
paigns as purely a war of conquest.] 

^ Dio was born at Nikaia (Nice) in Bithynia about 155 a.d., in the reign 
of Antoninus Pius. His knowledge of Kome and its government was a 
part of his own life, a large part indeed. His father, Cassius Apronianus, 
was imperial governor of Dalmatia and of Cilicia. Dio came to Rome in 
180 and entered the senate. He was designated praetor by the emperor 
Pertinax in 193. The favorable notice of Septimius Severus he gained by 
his first historical and political composition, and so in time conceived the 
idea, as though Livy never had been, of writing the entire history of 
Rome from JEneas down to his own times. He firmly believes that the 
deity (t6 dai/xdvLov) reveals himself to men through prodigia, dreams, and 
signs. In the reign of Alexander Severus he became proconsul of Africa 
and imperial legate of Dalmatia and Upper Pannonia. In 229 he became 
consul ordinarius^ jointly with the emperor Alexander Severus, and died 
in Nikaia in 235. The complete work was of 80 books. Of these, 37-44 
deal with the nineteen years from the Catilinarian movement to Caesar's 
death. Most of Dio's composition was doing when he was an elderly or 
an old man. In Italy his favorite abode was Capua on account of the 
peace and leisure there to be had. As to style, he is as much under the 
influence of Thucydides, as Pausanias, about 40 years before him, is 
under that of Herodotus. 

For ten years he had gathered material (72, 23): twelve further years 
were spent in elaboration and composition. Of Dio's recital of Caesar's 
Gallic War I have dealt before with some care, under the years 58-52 e.g. 

Dio is an historian in a stronger and truer sense than either Plutarch 
or Appian. An active life in the larger tasks of government and in emi- 
nent positions certainly enabled him to take a larger view of things : here 
there was not only experience in the routine of provincial government, 
but also contact with a wide range of actual humanity, the dispensation 
of civil and criminal law, command of troops, management of taxes and 
imposts : this, indeed, was no mean preparation for a historian of Rome. 



THE OTHER SOURCES 307 

In tbis respect he was superior to almost all of his predecessors, perhaps 
even to Sallust and Tacitus. To designate him as a "Bithynian" is 
about as apt as to call Alexander Hamilton a West Indian or a Britisher. 
When Dio deals with motives and designs, his favorite themes, we may- 
rest assured that we are studying not a mere chronicler, but a political 
thinker ; above all, a keen psychologist and one who is not at all given to 
the idealization of human character. His perpetual inclination is to sup- 
ply design and motive for acts whose mere actuality is well known and 
long established. He is therefore removed as far as possible from a mere 
chronicler or annalist, and we are made to feel that here is a man almost 
morbid in his unwillingness to be content with the mere surface of things, 
or to accept the acts of political persons at their own valuation. 
' So, while Plutarch and Appian appear to us more in the rSle of tran- 
scribers or excerptors, the elusive pursuit of sources is somewhat less 
urgent in his case, and, as we become more acquainted with his character 
and personality, we feel that we have to do with a judge of motive and 
with a psychological critic of rather keen vision and very positive maturity. 
Livy in many ways was personally too near the events and personalities 
of the Civil War to write without bias for neither side. Here we feel that 
the greater remoteness of Dio was to him a positive advantage. 
- - Whatever facts and data of tradition, the delineations of character in 
Dio are in the main his own. As for Caesar, Dio waits not to the Ides 
of March, nor does he append his valuation to some of the great crises in 
Caesar's career, but enters into such a sketch much earlier, near the end 
of Cesar's consular administration, in connection with the events and 
schemes leading to Cicero's exile (38, 11). First, Cicero's provocation; 
next, Caesar's constitutional determination not to respond in kind. At 
this point Dio launches into an admirable delineation of some of the most 
salient features of Caesar's character. Caesar, he says, was not dislodged 
by abuse, he was not captivated by flattery. The essence of his nature 
was comity and reasonableness, he was not easily moved to anger. " In 
the vast total of affairs in his public life he sat in judgment (idiKalov) on 
very many men, but not so as to be swayed by anger or to act hastily. 
He granted no favors to temper, but examined profoundly the given 
emergency, and the majority of those whom he pursued were not even 
allowed to become aware of it. His action was guided, not by the pur- 
pose of seeming to beat back certain antagonists, but by the aim of man- 
aging everything in such a way as to rouse the least envy, and with an 
eye single to advantage. And on this account, too, he was wont to inflict 
his penalties in a private way and where one would least have expected it ; 
partly on account of public reputation, that he might not seem to be 
wrathful, and also in order that (the person involved) should not per- 
ceive it in advance and so be on his guard, nor attempt to inflict some 
injury upon him before being stricken himself. . . . And on this account 
also he forgave many of those who had caused him great trouble, or he 
persecuted them but a little, because he trusted they would not do him 



308 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

any injury any more. Many also he punished more than was due (irXetov 
Tov KadyjKovTos) with a view to his own security. ..." Clearly then here 
we have a cool and statesmanlike valuation of the man Caesar, as one not 
readily moved by enthusiasm, nor partisanship, nor rancor. There is a 
keen and objective acerbity over it all, as the atmosphere is over a land- 
scape. Dio has few illusions as to the so-called great men of history. 
Nor is there the slightest idealization of Pompey, either, whose secretive 
manner saved him not from Dio's keen computation of motives. 

As to the factors of power (Dio 42, 49, 4) CcBsar was keenly alive to. 
the fact that these were treasure and soldiers : funds furnished the means 
of supporting legions, and the latter were the means of filling the coffers 
afresh, one being essential to the other. This is given as one of Caesar's 
sayings. 

While he was the 'humanest of men' (42, 55, 3), he treated mutiny 
with inexorable rigor. Speed and the moral results of sudden and sur- 
prising initiative were the most effective means of his strategy (42, 56). 



Dio takes particular pains (Livy?) to enumerate Caesar's incessant 
levying of contributions in the provinces. Particularly does he cite cases 
where Caesar laid his hands on temple-treasure, as on the Capitol even 
(41, 39), or where he took treasure from the temple of Hercules at Tyre 
(42, 49), or from the temple of the same in Phenician Gades (43, 39). — 
His adroitness in dealing with certain troops that had been mutinous : he 
used them up in Africa, ridding himself of them on the battlefields, and, 
at the same time, defeating the enemy with them (42, 55). 

Caesar's ignoring of the constitution {irapa to. irdrpLa) is noted freely 
and never defended, and still the conspiracy is designated as an unholy 
act of mad infatuation as of men possessed (44, 1). 

A remarkable blunder of Dio's must conclude this sketch. Entirely 
like Appian (but quite unlike Plutarch), he has no clear grasp of the con- 
ference of Luca, in the spring of 56 b.c. (Dio, 38, 25 sq.), and later on 
falls into the curious mistake of saying that the formal extension of 
Caesar's imperium was for three years only (40, 59). 



APPENDIX 

ri XPV (TlUTrdv; — EURIPIDES. 

MOMMSEN AND FROUDE 



t r 



MoMisiSEN's "History of Rome" tapers into, ends with, an apotheosis. 
The idol in that shrine is Caesar. The book has been a veritable incubus. 
Alongside of it, and after it, were written sober and objective works, like 
that of Ludwig Lange : a constitutional, or, better, a political history of 
the Roman commonwealth. But Lange's book was written for the few, 
for the student working in the closet. Mommsen wrote with a verve, a 
fervor, above all, with a sovereign cocksureness which is apt to inthrall 
youth, and by which the liberal Philistine will swear. Let us see. In 
the gifted pastor's son of Schleswig, born under Danish sovereignty, and 
unfolding at Kiel a profound predilection for Roman Law, there came to 
reside, together with penetration and a tremendous industry rarely seen 
before, a glow of political conviction unique in connection with erudition. 
At the same time the soul of young Mommsen was powerfully swayed by 
the philosophy of Hegel : all is in a flux, and the strongest is — at least 
for the zenith of his strength — the manifestation of the World-spirit. 
The right of the "World-spirit is the highest, it is absolute. What tran- 
spires, what is realized into domination and control, is at the same time 
the judgment of the world, a secular doomsday ever moving forward. 
Hegel coined that catchy phrase : ' Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltge- 
richt : ' he had a legerdemain trick of borrowing phrases from the system 
of Christian faith. What is, is rational. It is at bottom the right of 
might, and there is no tyrant, autocrat, or conqueror of human annals 
who cannot cloak his achievements with this so-called dialectic. In 
1806, when at Jena Napoleon set his foot on the Prussian monarchy, 
the Suabian metaphysician, Hegel, was filled with awe at this incarna- 
tion of the World-spirit.i — In 1846-47, when 29-30 years old, Mommsen, 
in the enjoyment of a classical scholarship, was in Italy, largely in the 
old Bourbon kingdom of Naples, the inscriptions of which he gathered 
with rare exactness and industry. 

Returning to Denmark in the revolutionary parturition period of 
France and Germany, he was, for a year or so, editor of a political jour- 
nal. His hatred for the conservatives and for the orthodox was deep and 
passionate. When things calmed down, he gained an academic post at 

1 So was Goethe. 
309 



310 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

Leipsic, but in the reaction he was branded as a democrat and moved on 
to Zurich. From here he was called to Breslau. In 1858 he was called 
to Berlin, where he taught to his death in 1903. His Roman history was 
completed by 1857, if I am not mistaken, i.e., in his fortieth year. If 
Mommsen had lived long in England, if he had been, indeed, a native of 
Great Britain, or of the United States, he probably would not have written 
such a book. But his political education consisted largely in protest and 
dissent, merely. Bismarck eventually united Germany with instrumentali- 
ties infinitely more noble and incomparably more patriotic than the mer- 
cenary veterans of Csesar. A free parliament was intrusted with a large 
share of the national government : the historical rights of the past were 
preserved or wisely adjusted. Here was a political creation incomparably 
better than Csesar's : *■ A me omnia proficiscentur ! "^ 

Still Mommsen and the other politicizing professors formed a consist- 
ent and stubborn opposition (1862-66) : some of them thought they were 
playing the role of little Hampdens against the new Strafford. All very 
curious. Most curious in the case of Mommsen. When we stopped 
Spanish misrule in Cuba, he glowered and growled (1897). • Or did he 
hold that a republic should have no empire ? There is sound wisdom in 
that lesson of Roman history, at least. 

But to return : let us look at Mommsen's political judgments and 
political philosophy a little more closely. My references are to Momm- 
sen's third volume, the sixth reprint of the German original 1875. Apart 
from one footnote caused by the Civil War of the United States, the plates 
of the original edition were never changed. There is something impres- 
sive, almost dogmatic, in that. 

Thus we read (p. 93) : "But when a government cannot govern, it 
ceases to be legitimate, and whoever has the power has also the right to 
overthrow it." Pretty philosophy. A constitution or any constitutional 
law is quite dispensable here, and you might have a revolution once a 
decade. Our Spanish friends in Central America would subscribe to that. 

His political judgment is swayed — how could it be otherwise? — by 
the history and successes of the great, as well as the other, Napoleon : 
" Demokratie und Monarchic stehen in enger Wahlverwandschaf t " (De- 
mocracy and Monarchy have a relation of close aflBnity) : Aristotle puts 
it not quite that way. To be concise : Mommsen's political ideals, judg- 
ments, notions, convictions, sympathies, and antipathies, were formed in 
the period between the two Napoleons, when the dull repristination policy 
of Metternich and the Holy Alliance had made the very idea of conserva- 
tism hateful to most of the eager and vigorous minds of central Europe. 
Out of this environment and such influences, Mommsen has forged for 
himself a set of phrases, which jingle and clank with an almost metallic 
resonance in his lively pages. Such a trump card, one of them, is "Z)ze 
Demokratie.'''' He operates with it as though it were a genuine and pal- 
pable political something. There was., indeed, a '■'• popularis'''' party, so 
called. Tribunes were, indeed, created, ten per annum. But this "de- 



APPENDIX 311 

mocracy " rarely polled its ballots unless it was paid. Cato refused, and 
they were angry. In Paris, indeed, there was a democracy, and in the 
German Palatinate, and up and down the Rhine : it was represented at 
Frankfurt, 1848. But Mommsen's incessant operating with the Roman 
" Demokratie," is rather empty jingle. Cicero's one phrase of the ''mi- 
sera plehecula hirudo cerarii,'' i.e., ' the wretched and contemptible Plebs, 
leech of the treasury,' is more significant and more luminous than all of 
Mommsen's political ejaculations. 

The central point, is, however, that monarcMj was the decree of the 
World-spirit just then. So all those who struggle for the old order are 
belabored by Mommsen for fools or scoundrels. Mommsen's vocabulary 
of abuse is extensive and racy, largely, in its idiomatic vigor, defying trans- 
lation. " Cato, nach Rabulisten Art " (p. 190), "von dem bocksteifen und 
halbnarrischen Cato" (202), " Cato's gewissenhafte Thorheit" (206), 
"der standhafte Principiennarr Cato" (213), " der Don Quixote der 
Aristokratie," "Marcus Favonius, Cato's Sancho " (327), "Fine Op- 
position, die wohl ehrenwerth, aber leider dock auch zurjleich Idcherlich 
war'' (327). 1 The last time I read this, I thought of the professorial 
opposition to Bismarck (1862-65), when Mommsen's friends, Gneist, Vir- 
chow, etc., stood in the way of the great statesman and tried to stop his 
work. There is much irony in the contrast between men's judging of 
others and their own living. 

Much of Mommsen's third volume is as though Mommsen were living 
in Caesar's time, or, better yet, as if Caesar were living in Mommsen's time, 
say at Paris in 1849-51, and Mommsen were writing editorials in the 
future monarch's favor. The artificial modernity achieved by clothing 
those remoter figures with the political dress of yesterday is exceedingly 
attractive, particularly to those who have no access to, nor desire to 
examine, the sources for themselves.^ It does much for the literary and 
commercial success of a book, but it is not enduring historiography. But 
it comes close to the reader and makes of him a partisan without much 
labor. Now it is somewhat absurd to inject the sympathies or antipathies 
of 1854-57 into the politics, nay, into the religion! of the Rome of 54-44 
B.C. Is it not ? Mommsen does it without reserve. . . . When, in the 
course of Pompey's campaigns Mommsen arrives at Jerusalem, he falls in 
with Pharisees and Sadducees. Can he restrain his ego there ? No. His 
hatred of orthodoxy per se must out. He calls the Pharisees with the 
party-phrase of his own day: "Jene Orthodoxen." Of the struggle 
between the two factions in the Jewish commonwealth he speaks thus: 
" Those representatives of orthodoxy fought against the wicked heretics 
with all the ruthless spirit of non-reconciliation, with which the Pious are 

^ "An opposition which, indeed, was honorable, but ridiculous also, at 
the same time." 

2 The much heralded Ferrero is master of this vicious historiography : 
he gives us a "Tammany Hall" of Rome. These parallels glibly estab- 
lished are simply performances of literary audacity. 



312 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

wont to battle for the possession of earthly blessings" (p. 141), i.e., they 
are constitutionally hypocrites. In his heat he drifts on to Hohenstaufen 
and Papacy. 

In dealing with the senatorial class of Eome he must vent his dislike 
for the Junker of Prussia. The word even will crop out: " weisen 
Beschluss des verschollenen Junkertums,''^ p. 338. Now the Junkers of 
Prussia were in the main convinced royalists, and no less worthy of our 
historical regard than the venal creatures who helped the brilliant usurper 
at Rome to his golden chair. In the field and in the cabinet, living in 
the main with Spartan simplicity, they made Prussia. — And Mommsen, 
perhaps unconsciously, puts Junker and senators in one basket : " sich 
laecherlich machen, wie Legitimisten es pflegen " (p. 173); "die hoch- 
gebornen Herren " (212); " der Mensch soil kein Ritter sein, und am 
wenigsten der Staatsmann " (292). Add to this the other bete noire: 
" Inspirationsglaube der Localtopographen " (269). Of a Sibylline say- 
ing: "die himmlische Offenbarung" (318); " dass der Volkstribun Gains 
Ateius Capito den Crassus bei seinem Abzug nach Syrien iii alien Formen 
damaliger Theologie den bosen Geistern tiberantwortete " (327). 

One of the moral and jjolitical problems in Caesar's career is the 
advancement of the dictator from ostensible democracy to autocratic 
power. So, on a smaller scale, did Peisistratos at Athens, Cosmo dei 
Medici at Florence. Now Mommsen, who is more of a passionate pane- 
gyrist of his hero than apologist of the same, coolly undertakes to endow 
him, by his own fiat and in the face of the whole evidence of ancient his- 
toriography, with complete consistency and even with glorious statesman- 
ship and patriotism in this tortuous evolution. You may call it the 
audacity of the panegyrist, or the sophistry of the special pleader : the 
facts remain the same. It is not so. About Caesar's own Lex Julia 
Bepetundarum, as far as I can perceive, Mommsen preserves a curious 
silence or preterition. In the Hegelian Phenomenology of the World- 
spirit moral law is an impertinent intrusion. There is a consistent 
paralysis of the faculty of moral judgment, that elemental endowment 
of genuine humanity, whenever he comes upon the graver things in 
Csesar's career. The crown was only a mere incident in Caesar's lofty 
ambition (322). If ever the aim and end justified and sanctified the 
means, it is in Mommsen's delineation of Caesar's elevation. Thus of 
the Keltic gold: " That, besides this, the masses of gold accumulated in 
the temples of the gods and in the treasure chambers of the nobles in 
consequence of the war found their way to Rome, is a matter of course j 
when Caesar in all the Roman Empire offered his Gallic gold, and brought 
such masses of it into the financial market that gold lost 25 per cent of its 
value compared with silver, one may surmise what sums Gaul lost through 
his victory " (p. 296). i 

The rough total of the lives taken by Caesar in his northwestern con- 
/ 



/ 



Compare also Munro's excellent " Commentary on Catullus," 29. 



APPENDIX 313 

quests (inclusive of the never-to-be-forgotten shambles of the Usipetes and 
Tencteri) is said to have amounted roughly to the astounding and appall- 
ing grand total of one million. Once more the Hegelian World-spirit is 
invoked by Caesar's panegyrist. It is all for culture, i.e., for Greco- 
Roman culture : " It is more than an error, it is a wanton crime against 
the Holy Ghost" (that is his religion: Hegel loquitur) "potent in his- 
tory, if one considers Gaul solely as the training or drill space in which 
Csesar trained himself and his legions for the impending Civil War.'' 
What bathos ! But the World-spirit must be sovereign. What of it that 
the Gallic grammaticus Ausonius, some centuries later, could perform 
acrobatic feats in any given metre, and versify stuff from the Greek 
anthology into Latin : what of it, indeed ! — I have written of this matter 
elsewhere :i "As for the ^ World-spiirit ^ called in ... to sanctify the 
conquests of the great captain, that World-spirit, unfortunately, like flea 
or locust, hopped soon away and lighted on the brawny chest of Antony, 
on the languorous eyelashes of Cleopatra. . . . What a pity ! Odd 
dialectic of world movement." 

Writing in 1857 (p. 478) that for the slaveholding aristocracy of our 
own southern states an emperor some day would prove a solution : there, 
too, the idea of such a settlement would be justified before the Spirit of 
History. That Christianity had an infinitely greater power, a power 
enduring and ever potent, to rejuvenate that aging and corrupt world, of 
this patent fact of history one could not find the slightest intimation in 
this historian. There are many ecstatic passages about Caesar : like all 
overstatements they must collapse into themselves, and have or are going 
to collapse. 

His treatment of Caesar's relations to women is painful (463). — As 
for Cleopatra, his intrigue with her was " a merry prelude " (ein lustiges 
Vorspiel). It was nothing. But when Cicero and Cato caused the execu- 
tion of the Catilinarians, in a somewhat summary fashion indeed, but for 
crimes which certainly were high treason of the most palpable order, this 
was "an atrocious deed" (p. 191: eine grauenvoUe Tat), a "historical 
tragedy," a "brutal Justizmord ! " This special pleading and heated 
partisanship is simply painful and intolerable. — Caesar as a champion of 
freedom : the passage of p. 372, where Caesar receives the tribunes Antony 
and Cassius (his puppets, whose fleeing from Rome was probably deter- 
mined and provided for in advance), Caesar, I say, as the paladin of free- 
dom, who for years and years had iDought his majority of annual tribunes 
at so much per tribune — Caesar in this lofty role, and in Mommsen's 
ecstatic, almost dithyrambic phrase, is simply grotesque. 



But Caesar did indeed impose a military monarchy upon the Mediter- 
ranean world. Caligula, Nero, Otho, Vitellius, Commodus, Caracalla, 

1 ' Testimonium Animoe,' 1908, p. 380. 



314 ANNALS OF C^SAR 

Elagabal, and other blessings of ancient history must be credited in a 
measure to his account. 

I close this note of a dissent ever growing with advancing years, with 
a citation from Madvig,i a passage of sound and trenchant truth which I 
believe has never been done into English. "In the most recent time I 
do not know whether by following Mommsen or the imperial author of the 
Vie de Cesar, it has come to be the fashion in a lofty manner to extol 
Caesar's grand and lucid ideas and plans for reorganizing the Roman 
state and empire, from which (plans and ideas) quite a different crea- 
tion would have issued than the Augustan. With all the measure of 
recognition which one may give to Csesar's strategic genius, to his clear 
political vision and his energetic will, it must still be pronounced, that we 
do not know the slightest of these plans and ideas, that in actual history 
no Caesar can be found at all, whose point of issue and the aim striven for 
from the beginning was a newly organized and better state, but merely 
a man convinced of his sound ability, ambitious and intolerant of any 
rival ; and finally, that it is exceedingly problematical whether Ctesar, 
with the premises presented to his mind by the entire political develop- 
ment of past history, Avould have found a much better solution of the 
gigantic task proposed, a task to be solved but very slowly and imper- 
fectly, — would have found a much better solution than Augustus, 
Caesar did leave behind him a great but non-political system, viz. , the im- 
provement of the calendar ; but the preparations for a*1;*arthian war 2 in 
the last period of Caesar's life do not make plausible the idea tha,t he pur- 
sued grand plans of organization. Genius, too, is one-sided and subject 
to the conditions of its own times." This judgment of the great Danish 
scholar will add value to this page. It is not wise, if one desires true 
vision, to approach a figure, no matter how great, on all fours. 



Froude (1818-1894) 

The main data of Fronde's literary biography are familiar to most 
readers. A close contemporary of Mommsen, and like him, the son of a 
clergyman, he received at Oxford, in 18-10, at twenty -two, a second class 
in litercB humaniores. In 1844, so as not to lose his fellowship in 
Exeter Hall, he took orders. Carlyle, and later Spinoza, impressed him 
strongly. In 1849 his " Nemesis of Faith " (a story) was officially burned 
at Exeter Hall. On the same day he resigned his Fellowship : his breach 
with clericalism was complete. Carlyle began to patronize him, and 
Matthew Arnold became his friend. His " History of England in the 
Sixteenth Century," came out from 1856 to 1870. Its literary value 
is probably surer than its historical rating. A man who can glorify 

1 " Verfassung und Yerw. des R. St.," I, p. 525, n. 1881. 

2 Urged in this work sub anno 44, and even in the recital of the 
Mtinda campaign. E. G. S. 



APPENDIX 315 

Henry VIII can do anything. He was bitterly averse to Gladstone's 
Irish conciliation policy (1870) ; he had also a deep aversion for Bright. 
In 1874 his "English in Ireland" was completed. Between him and 

E. A. Freeman there was an irreconcilable antagonism of historical vision 
and method. In 1879 appeared his " Cossar : a Sketch.'" The "sketch " 
was probably added to disarm expectations of critical scholarship : if so, 
it was wisely added. Thirty years ago, or, to be exact, thirty-one years 
ago, when the book was recently out, I read it for the first time : "then," 
says Macrobius, " when we admired, but did not yet practice judgment." 
This year, immediately after my critical study of the classic sources of our 
knowledge of Ciiesar was completed, I perused the doughty Liberalist once 
more, and made generous annotations, — copious, I mean. 

I cannot say that I read coji amove. The edition before me is a reprint 
by Scribners', New York, 1880. What I shall set down here is noted as 
of that edition. Many data will be of smaller detail, but a historian has no 
more warrant to be inexact or ignorant than a mere classical philologist. 

Eor an Oxford man to write Cahis instead of Gains is odd. 

Sylla (after Plutarch) is an absurdity of spelling. 

To compare Sulla (p. 95) with Graham of Claverhouse is a feat. 

P. 121. " No doubt {sic) at Pompey's instance he was sent into Spain 
to complete Pompey's w^ork " (nine years after?) "and settle the 
finances of that distracted country." Really he settled the finances 
chiefly of his distracted private purse. 

The respect of Cicero for Marius (p. 121, n.) was simply due to the 
fact that Marius, too, was a native of Arpinum. Is it possible that 

F. did not realize this ? 

P. 122. Heavy blunder on the organization of Juries under the lex 
Aurelia of 70 b.c. 

P. 123. Pirates " led by highborn adventurers" : whence this ? — P. 124. 
" The natural course would have been to make Pompey dictator," i.e., to 
deal with the pirates. Hardly. — P. 125. " The noble lords " : this is a 
Mommsenian trick to make the senators odious. — P. 126. "Pompey" 
(i.e., through lex Gabinia) "was for three years sovereign of the Roman 
world." Nonsense. — lb. "He was content to scatter them among 
inland colonies": Soloi for one was neither a colony nor inland. — 
P. 127. Cicero's motives for supporting the Manilian law are stated 
quite fancifully. — lb. Lucullus is quite unfairly judged. — lb. Cicero in 
66 B.C. cannot be called " by far the most gifted person in the conserva- 
tive party " : he had at that time never made a general political speech as 
yet at all. — P. 130. Chronology or sequence of Pompey's eastern cam- 
paign is confused. — P. 131. Pompey did not return poor. His mansion 
in the Carinse was then built. Also the huge stone theatre inaugurated 
in 55. — P. 133. Caesar and Crassus were, indeed, accomplices of the plot 
of Autronius and P. Sulla. There is no doubt of it. —P. 134. That 
Cicero undertook the defence of Catiline after the latter's misgovernment 
of Africa, has never been proved. The opposite is demonstrable. — 



316 ANNALS OF CESAR 

P. 136. Absurd of Fr. to call the anti-senatorial "party" "reformers," 
or the "reforming party." To call Csesar at 37 the " strongest intellect," 
is running ahead of events. — lb. To call the army "democratic" is 
fanciful. The legionaries were all mercenaries, without any strong civic 
convictions at all. —P. 137. Csesar as sedile "built a temple to the 
Dioscuri" : but cf. Dio, 37, 8, 2. — P. 138. Caesar "had not aspired to 
the tribuneship " ; simply because it was too insignificant for him. — 
lb. "Abstinence from the coarse debauchery." What authority? — 
P. 139. Csesar index qucestionis : Froude's notions of this function are 
hazy. Labienus, afterwards "so infamous." Caesar was no sovereign 
when L. turned to the other side (in 49). — P. 140. Again that fanciful 
spook of " democratic reformers." Rabirius was not acquitted. — lb. If 
Froude were not solidly ignorant of the State ritual of Roman religion, 
he could not pen as absurd a phrase as "the once sincerely believed 
Roman religion." — lb. Fr. confounds pontifical nomination with elec- 
tion. — lb. "Pope of Rome": absurd phrase. — lb. "Disbelief in the 
legends " : there were substantially none connected with the body of 
Roman ritual, loose transfer by Froude from the Greeks. — P. 141. " Lib- 
eral party" : Anglican phrase. There was none in Rome properly to 
be so named. — P. 142. Froude's notion of the sequence of political and 
other events of 63 b.c. is painfully confused. On Jan. 1, 63, Pompey's 
victories had not yet filled the public treasury. — lb. Cicero's friendship 
for Atticus: similarity of temperament? Certainly not. — P. 143. Fr. 
is not aware, evidently, that it was Csesar who engineered the Agrarian 
Law of Rullus. — P. 146. Here Fr. begins trotting at Mommsen's heels 
to contribute his dole in belittling Cato: "acrid tongue and narrow re- 
publican fanaticism " : tush, tush. — lb. More " noble lords." — P. 147. 
Cato did not "affect" to be shocked at Cicero's defence of Murena. — 
P. 151. Sad stuff about veterans of Sulla in the Catil. conspiracy: "were 
now trying to bring him (Sulla) back from the dead." — P. 152. Au- 
tronius was not among the leading Catilinarians in November, 63. — 
P. 154. More "young lords." — P. 155. Csesar spoke not immediately 
after Nero. He spoke " prsetorio loco" (Cic, "Att.," 12, 21). 

P. 156. Fr. the liberalist, on death, Csesar's view and Lucretius. The 
very fervor of Lucretius implies that the majority still feared something 
beyond death. Cicero aspired incessantly for a repose of his soul beyond 
mere annihilation. Fr. had forgotten to refresh himself from Tusculan 
Disp., etc. — P. 158. The billet from Servilia to Csesar a myth — enough 
to say Froude said so. Naive how he argues from English usages and 
parliament, naive to the point of childishness. — P. 160. ' Csesar attempted 
to reply' to Cato. Whence has Fr. this detail? Supremely absurd to 
make Csesar a kind of (noble) freethinker, to speak of Csesar's "infidel- 
ity." Fr. really means, Csesar's appearing an infidel. What is odious to 
Froude in 1879, he injects into the senate chamber of 63 b.c. — P. 161. 
Poor Autronius, too, strangled — by Froude. Went into exile later on, 
and died in exile. — P. 163. More "noble lords." Pompey sent . . . Me- 



APPENDIX 317 

tellus Nepos to . . . "demand the consulship for him." — "Where did Fr. 
find that ? Really it was for Afranius. — lb. Metellus did not ' ' commence 
his tribunate " on December 31, but on December 10. — P. 166. "Prevent 
a union between (Pompey) and Csesar(in 62) : nonsense ! nobody thought 
of it then, least of all Pompey, who, upon arriving, sought to enter into 
closer relationship to Cato, by marriage, but was rejected. —P. 166. Csesar 
an object of " adoration " of the wives and daughters of the " noble lords " : 
hardly so distant. The intrigues of Caesar were one and all plain im- 
moralities. — P. 167. Servilia matter : whitewashed out of Froude's fancy, 
who promptly turns into legends anything unpleasant. iSo even Cleo- 
patra and Caesarion ; because, perhaps, Oppius wrote a book against that 
view. Nothing, however, was proven. This page is quite Froudesque 
in its bastard criticism. — P. 169. There were no "innocent intimacies" 
in Roman society.— P. 170. Bona Dea recently (?) introduced in Rome. 
— P. 171. Poor Clodius. . . . Cicero ready to help him : whence is this 
stuff? — lb. Unfortunate Pompeia; why? She committed adultery. — 
P. 174. Fr. knows nothing of the distinctly popular third of the then 
juries: the trihuni cerarii. For 'judges' Fr. should say jurors. — 
P. 177. Fr. seems to confound 'Asia'' and Asia Minor. 'Asia' and 
Bithynia had been Roman before Pompey's campaigns. — P. 181. ' Popu- 
laris' is not well rendered by 'popular.' — P. 182. More ignorant talk 
about Cato. Why did not Fr. study the sources instead of echoing 
Mommsen ? 

P. 183. Caesar and Crassus per se belonged to the patrician circle, too. 

— P. 184. 'Inevitable revolution': what revolution? — lb. Were the 
consular provinces not determined even before the election, under the 
Sempronian laws ? Cf. Suet., " C." 19. 

The summary of Caesar's political exertions, as before 59 b.c, is simply 
fanciful. — P. 186. The senate, through the reforms of 70, had lost the 
exclusive initiative of legislation. — P. 189, 'Eternal order of nature': 
Carlylesque. — P. 195. Froude badly confuses the Leges Julioe of Caesar 
and the Leges Julice of Augustus : positively so. 

P. 196. Caesar working rt(7ai?is« revolution . . . indeed. — P. 197. Cae- 
sar's wish for an imperium : Fr. is childlike in speaking about Caesar's 
motives. Of the anti-repuhlican bearing of the whole Triumvirate design 

— not one word. — P. 199. Caesar's Gallic command: Fr. is purblind 
about it, as if there was no ancient historiography. — P. 200. A gross 
blunder : Fr. confounds Gallia comata and the independent Kelts. — 
P. 202. Bibulus, " hero of patrician saloons." Fancy. — P. 205. Cicero's 
"total want of political principles " : echo of Mommsen. —P. 206. Cicero 
had ' ' perhaps an intimacy with Clodius' sister.' ' Nonsense ! — P. 214. ' ' In 
every line that he wrote, Cicero was attitudinizing for posterity." Non- 
sense ! — P. 215. Ailobroges annexed " lately'': really in 121 b.c, seventy 
years before.— P. 218. Inquisition lugged into relation of Druids: also 
Smithfield. — P. 220. Ariovistus, a ''Bavarian'' prince. —P. 225. The 
Roman senate was no legislature. — P. 226. Labienus was not any alter- 



318 ANNALS OF CiESAR 

nate for Cicero. — P. 226. Party feeling had nothing to do with service in 
Gaul. — P. 227. Defences on Rhone: '■valla'' are not muri. — P. 228. 
"at Turin": but cf. "E.G.," 1, 10. —P. 229. "Retribution" on Tigu- 
rini, as though Fr. were in Csesar's headquarters. — lb. Absurd to call 
anti-Romanist ^dui "secret traitors." — P. 230. Divitiacus was not 
"the reigning chief of the ^dui." — lb. Absurd to call the Helvetii 
"Swiss."— P. 231. Rhone for Rhine : probably a misprint. — P. 237. 
" Treacherous senate " : naive partisanship of Fr. — P. 241. "No general 
was ever so careful of his soldiers' lives ": but why ? — P. 241. Of Belgse : 
" His intention was apparently not to annex any of these tribes to Rome." 
Fr. does not know what the ten legati of 56 b.c. were for. 

P. 242. "Usually a single legion went in advance," etc. : elementary 
blunder in misreading the Latin text. — P. 243. Legati had not "com- 
panies," but legions. — lb. The "thick hedges " were not on the Roman 
side of the Sabis. — P. 246. More "noble lords." 

P. 261. Cato and Cyprus : "He was well pleased with his mission, 
though he wished it to appear to be forced upon him." What silly stuff 
will men write when animus holds their pen for them. A "historian," 
too. — P. 257. Of Cicero: "The senate, which was his own dunghill" ; 
. . . I.e., he merely a crowing cock. — P. 261. Cicero was attached to 
the triumvirate. — P. 265. The Ptolemy matter is truly an Egyptian 
darkness for Froude. He has dipped into Cicero's letters here and 
there, but he has in no wise mastered them. — P. 267. "Cato, a virtu- 
ous fanatic, passionate, with a vein of vanity." — P. 268. Sestius. not 
Sextius. 

P. 272. The senators at Luca had no eagerness for "reforms " • they sim- 
ply had itching palms. How so was "the army " to remodel " the state "? 
— P. 276. The acme of absurdity : if Cicero and Csesar had united, "the 
Republic . . . might have survived for many generations." — P. 278. Cato 
"foamed on the Rostra." — P. 281. Writes about the Veneti, not like an 
historian, but a mere echo of Caesar. — P. 286. "Ex equitibus nostris," 
" B. G.," 4, 12, 3. " Roman knights " ! ! — P. 288. " Csesar had under- 
taken the conquest of Gaul for the defense of Italy." Indeed ! — P. 302. 
'Induciomarus." — P. 310. "A letter to Csesar inclosed in the shaft 
of his javelin." But Csesar (5, 45, 4) wrote illigatas. — P. 312. (Caesar) 
' ' and the two Ciceros had been friends and companions in youth. " Where 
is the authority for that ? — P. 316. " Ambiorix had added treachery to 
insurrection." Absurdly put, unless one is a Roman. — P. 320. Cicero 
accepted a loan from Caesar, not a gift. — P. 323. Cicero's De Provinciis 
Consularibiis is certainly 7iot the finest of his speeches. — P. 325. For 
" acted " say pleaded. — P. 362. Alesia investment : " the most daring feat 
in the military annals of mankind ; " voice of panegyrist. — P. 363. Fan- 
ciful as to Caesar's cosmopolitan designs. — P. 365. " He wished to hand 
over his conquests to his successor." No comment necessary. — P. 369. 
" His wars had paid their own expenses." Not true. After Luca Caesar 
was reimbursed from the public treasury for the illegal increase or doub- 



APPENDIX 319 

ling of his own legions. — P. 370. " Csesar was a reformer." Nonsense ! 
P. 371. A tissue of fancy about Caesar as a " reformer." 

But to go on to the end would be like counting the pustules on a small- 
pox patient. 



To improve Fronde's Caesar, one would first have to destroy it, and 
then write a new book. It is a partisan and flimsy performance, partly 
an echo of Mommsen, and partly a semi-novelistic congeries of notions 
and judgments bred in Froude's fancy. You might as well take a Napo- 
leon and dress him up to look like a combination of Cromwell, Gladstone, 
Bright, and a champion of free thought besides. One cannot, however, 
smooth one's periods, at sixty, become a classical scholar over night, and 
occasionally dip into a very considerable mass of classical historiography, 
whose critical value and relative weight, even with consummate and ex- 
haustive industry, cannot, very often, be conclusively established. 



University Heights, N.Y., Oct. 26, 1910. 



INDEX 



Caesar is abbreviated C. ; Pompey, P. Important references are emphasized in the printing. 



Actorius, M. Naso, 34, 268. 

Aduatuca, 145 sq. 

^dui, 89, 140, 160, 161, 173. 

^milius Paulus, cons. 50 B.C., 180. 

Afranius, 200 sq. 

Africa, 220. 

Agrarian troubles, 8 sqq. 

Alhan families, 2. 

Alemanni, 96. 

Alesia, 164 sqq., 172, 174, 268. 

Alexandria, 213 sqq., 221. 

AUobroges, 88. 

Amantius, 217, 223. 

Amhiani, 103. 

Ambiorix, 135, 145 sq., 174. 

Ampius, T. Balbus, 34, 215, 228, 248, 
301. 

Analogia, de, Caesar's, 264, 273. 

Anarchy, 133, 149, 153. 

Anjou and Poitiers, 174 sq. 

Anticaesarian historians, 34, 91, 215, 
228, 248, 268, 301. 

Anticato, Cajsar's, 276 sq. 

Antonius, C, 65. 

Antonius, M., the orator, 25. 

Antony, Mark, 172, 175, 183, 185, 190, 
192, 218, 222, 223, 256 sq., 259, 293. 

Apellikon, library of, 27. 

ApoUonius of Rhodes, 39. 

Appian, 8, 9, 10, 13, 14, 17, 18; gross 
error, 20, 23, 27; differs fr. Plut., 
28; confused, 30; puzzled about 
Sulla's retiring, 36, 46 ; authorities 
differ, 48, 50, 56, 57 ; on Catilinarian 
debate, 70, 76; on triumvirate, 81; 
ignorance, 81 ; use of Livy probable, 
123, 149, 152, 187 ; on Rubicon mat- 
ter: strong resemblance to Plut., 
195, 202, 208, 212, 215, 225, 234, 236, 



237, 240, 242, 253, 255, 257, 259, 269, 

295, 303 sqq. 
Appius Claudius, 252. 
Appuleius Saturnimis, 14 sqq. 
Apulia, 16. 

Aquitania, 115, 116 sq. 
Aremorica, 175. 

Ariovistus, 89 sqq., 97 sqq., 141. 
Aristocracy, 13, 15. 
Arsinoe, 212, 234. 
Arverni, 155. 
Asconiiis, 16, 39, 65, 152. 
Asculum Picenum, 19. 
Asellio, 11. 

Asia, province, 27, 86, 215. 
Asinius, v. Pollio. 
Athens, 5. 

Atticus, fears C, 197. 
Augustus (Octavanius Caesar), 3, 257; 

'Caesaris ultor,' 293; golden age of, 

297 ; censured Livy as partisan, ib. 
Aurelia, 3, 7. 

Aurelius Cotta (uncle of C), 42, 263. 
Aurelius Cotta, legate, 135. 
Avaricum, 159, 173. 



Bsetica, 240. 

Balbus, agent of C, 44, 82, 131, 147, 

172, 183, 203, 232 sq., 238, 243, 244, 

245, 279, 285. 
Belgse, 100 sqq. ; in Britain, 129. 
Bellovaci, 102, 173 sqq. 
Belhim Africum, 225 sqq., 228, 230, 

283. 
Bplhim Alexandrinum, 213, 216, 217, 

281. 
Belhim Hispaniense, 240, 241, 243, 

285 sqq. 
Bellum Sociak (Marsicum, Italicum), 

16. 



321 



322 



INDEX 



Bibracte, 96, 173. 

Bihrax, 102. 

Bibulus, 80, 85, 88, 152, 205, 276. 

Biography, dangers of, 1. 

Bisinarck, 310 sq. 

Bogud, 242. 

Botsford, 13, 21, 23, 34, 51, 84. 

Bratuspantimn, 102. 

BHtain, first expedition to, 124 ; sec- 
ond, 126 sqq.; no conquest of, 131; 
authority on Druidism, 142. 

Bruttium, 16. 

Brutus, Albinus Decimus, 115, 156, 
253, 262. 

Brutus, M. Junius, son of Servilia, 
251, 252, 261. 

Bursa, 169. 



Cadvallon, leader of British coalition, 
130 sqq. 

Csecilia Metella, 117, 153. 

Cselius, 178, 181, 183, 290. 

Ca&sar, meaning of word, 3. 

Csesar, Gaius Julius, philhellenism 
of, 4; hexameters on Terence, 5; 
death of his father, ib. ; never under 
tutela, 6; toga virilis, ib.; marries 
Cinna's daughter, ib. ; entered into 
inheritance of the Gracchi, 10 ; eu- 
logy of aunt Julia, 15; his father, 
25, 26 ; refuses to abandon Cornelia, 
32 ; mulcted by Sulla, ib. ; interces- 
sion for C. before Sulla, 33; serves 
in Asia Minor, 34 ; relations to Niko- 
medes of Bithynia, 34 sq. ; gains 
corona civica, 36; under Servilius 
(Isauricus), ib. ; declines to support 
revolution of Lepidus, 38 ; his prose- 
cution of Dolabella, ib. ; several 
actiones published, 39; prosecutes 
C. Antonius, ib. ; to Rhodes for 
further training in oratory, ib. ; ad- 
venture with corsairs, 40 sq. ; ponti- 
fex, 42 ; policy of lavish hospitality, 
ib. ; avoids tribunate, 44 ; active for 
rogatio Plotia, 53; quaestor, 54; re- 
habilitates name of Marius, ib. ; 
marries Pompeia, ib.; in Spain, 55; 
anecdotes reviewed, 55 sq.; inter- 
ested in Transpadanes, 56; lavish 



entertainer, 59; aedile-elect, ib. ; 
supports P.'s eastern command, 60; 
in plot of Autronius and Sulla, 
60 sq.; associated with Catiline, 61 ; 
sedileship : further rehabilitation of 
Marius, 62 ; hostile to Cicero's con- 
sular promotion, 65; notorious as 
an organizer of bribery, ib ; iudex 
qiisestionis, ih.; favors Catiline, ib. ; 
tries to invalidate the S. C. uUimum, 
67 sq.; elected over Catulus as 
pontifex maximus : by money, 68 ; 
share in Catilinarian debate, 69 sq. ; 
billet from Servilia, 70; attempts to 
humiliate old Catulus, 72; prsetor, 
ib. ; supports revolutionary ple- 
biscitwn of a servitor of P., ib. ; 
attempts to implicate C. in Cati- 
linarian inquiry, 73; his punish- 
ment of Novius, ib. ; in Bona Dea 
scandal, 74; shelters his wife's se- 
ducer, 75 ; in his Spanish province, 
76 sq.; anecdotes, 77; consulate, 
79 sq.; organizes Triumvirate, 80; 
Agrarian bill, 83; publication of 
acta senatus, ib. ; abandons senate, - 
85 ; Lex lulia Repetundarum, 86 sq. ; 
Egyptian job, 87; insulted by sen- 
ate, 88; choice of province, ib. ; tem- 
porizing with Ariovistus, 90; plan- 
ning for political security while 
away, 91 ; creates identity for 
legions, 94; increases forces with- 
out authority, ib. ; Helvetian cam- 
paign, 94 sqq.; campaign against 
Ariovistus, 97 sqq. ; panic at Veson- 
tio, 97 sq. ; attacks political oppo- 
nents through commentarii (later), 
98 ; adds to forces, 101 ; battle with 
Nervii, 103 sq. ; Gallia pacata, 105, 
114 ; attack on C.'s Campanian land- 
law, 108; view of Cicero, 110; con- 
ference of Luca, 110 sq. ; Cicero 
supports second quinquennium, 112 ; 
reasons for extension of C.'s pro- 
consulate, 113; 'surprised' by re- 
sistance of maritime cantons, 114; 
attitudinizing, ib ; ruthless treat- 
ment of Veneti, 116; massacre of 
Usipetesand Tencteri, 119-123; first 
crossing of Rhine, 123; first expedi- 



INDEX 



323 



tion to Britain, 124 sq. ; political 
judgment on P., 126 ; second ex- 
pedition to Britain, 127; curiously 
ill-informed of Atlantic tides, 128; 
palliates failure in Britain, 131; 
exploitation chief idea of Roman 
public, 132 ; council at Samarobriva, 
134; on Sabinus and Cotta, 135; 
hastens to relief of Quintus Cicero, 
136 ; honors troops, 137 ; crypto- 
gram, 138; reinforcements, 139; in- 
vades district of Nervii, ib. ; second 
crossing of Rhine, 141 ; policy of 
preferences among Gauls, 142 ; vain 
efforts to capture Ambiorix, 144; 
.commands eleven legions in 53 B.C., 
145; saves Quintus Cicero's post, 
146; council among Remi, 147 ; P.'s 
new power threatening, 152; vain 
proposals to P., 153; question of 
termination of second quinquen- 
nium, ib. ; to be candidate for con- 
sulate while away from Rome, ib. ; 
fearing the being a private citizen, 
ib. ; lavish bounties in capital and 
in the field, 154; ferment in Gaul, 
155; begins to meet the national 
insurrection, 156 sq. ; unites his 
legions, 157; destroys Genabum: 
liberality to troops, ib. ; fall of 
Avaricum, 159; siege of Gergovia, 
160; defection of the iEdui, 161; 
C. abandons siege of Gergovia, 162 ; 
apparent collapse of his hold on 
Gaul, 163; defeats Vercingetorix in 
an open battle, 164; surrender of 
Alesia and Vercingetorix, 166 ; pref- 
erential treatment of Mdm and 
Arverni, ib. ; supports politician 
banished from Rome, 169 ; a hostile 
consul chosen, 170 ; C.'s minor oper- 
ations from base of Bibracte, 173; 
takes Uxellodunum, cutting off 
the hands of the defenders, 176 ; 
astounding summaries of political 
bounties, 177; concern for Cisal- 
pine, 178; hostile acts of consul M. 
Marcellus, 178, 179 sq. ; understand- 
ing with cons, ^milius, 180; hostile 
S. C, 181; control of tribunes, 182; 
Curio, 183 55. ; last summer in Gaul, 



185 sq. ; Curio slowly unmasking as 
political servitor of C, 186; his 
clever motions in senate, 187; C. 
gives up two legions, ib. ; C.'s consu- 
lar candidate defeated, 188 ; C.'s ulti- 
matum from Ravenna, liX); his own 
tribunes, 191 ; political crisis in sen- 
ate, Jan. 1-7, 49 b.c, 191 sqq. ; trib- 
unes ' flee ' to C, 192 ; C. harangues 
troops, ib. ; could C. safely retire 
TO PRIVATE LIFE? 193; Significant 
utterance of June, 48 B.C., 194; drives 
across Rubicon, 195; Corfinium and 
Sulmo taken, 196 sq. ; before Brun- 
disium, 197; to Rome: constitutional 
forms, 198; aerarium sanctius, 199; 
stay in Rome lost time, ib. ; Massi- 
lia, ib. ; Ilerda campaign in Spain, 

199 sqq.; seeks to avoid bloodshed, 

200 sq.; sharply condemns P., 201; 
named dictator, ib. ; bad appoint- 
ments by C, 202; second consulate 
at last, ib. ; consciousness of auto- 
crat revealed, 204; offensive strat- 
egy, 206; defeat at Dyrrachium, 
207; on alternative of plan of cam- 
paign, 208 ; Pharsalos, 208 sqq. ; dis- 
credits a Pompeian partisan, 212; 
in Egypt, ib.; Cleopatra, 213, 215; 
ends Alexandrine war, 214; cam- 
paign against Pharnaces, 215 sq. ; 
Zela, 216; belittles P., 217; lands 
at Tarentum, ib. ; southern Spain 
lost to C, 220; non-civic spirit of 
his troops, 222; restores order at 
capital, 223; tolerates corrupt par- 
tisans, 224; deals with mutinous 
legions, 225; sails for Africa, ib. 
operations there, 226 sq. ; Thapsus 
227; disappointed by Cato's death 
229 ; deep hatred of C. for Cato, 230 
Sardinia one of his "farms," 231 
C. in Rome, his power unbounded 
232; sore against Pompeians, 233 
'honors' voted him, 233 sqq.; the 
four triumphs, 234 sq.; feasts, 
games, bounties ; the new sovereign, 
235; reform of calendar, 236 ; Span- 
ish campaign of Munda: critical 
equilibrium, 239; contest of Munda, 
241 sq. ; composes his Anticato, 244 ; 



324 



INDEX 



honors after Munda, ib. ; Parthian 
campaign, ib. ; referred to as k'nig, 
245; his testament, ib. ; indifferent 
to censure at capital, 246; more 
' honors,' ib. ; sovereign whims, 248; 
guest at Cicero's Puteolanum, 249; 
his elevation galling to aristocracy, 
254; his judgment on Cicero, ib. ; 
temple to Clemency, 255 ; regal em- 
blems, ib. ; the plot, ib. ; diadem 
incident and Lupercalia, 256 sq. ; 
plans of Parthian campaign, 258; 
assassination, 259 sqq. ; writings 
of C, 263 sqq. ; trial of C. pro- 
posed, 267 ; would not imitate Sulla, 
274 sq. ; Anticato, 276 sq. ; his poem, 
'Iter,' 286; address at Gades, 288; 
angry pride, ib. ; paternity of Cleo- 
patra's child, 293; was his birth 
a curse or blessing? 297; excel- 
lent delineation of character by Dio, 
307 sq. 

Calpurnia, 258. 

Campus Stellas, 84. 

Caninius, 254. 

Cantium, 129. 

Capite censi, 14. 

Cappadocia, 216. 

Capua, 84. 

Carbo, 29. 

Carnutes, 156. 

Cassiiis Longinus, Gaius, 148, 240, 
252 sq., 257, 260. 

Cassius Longinus, Quintus, 190, 192, 
202, 220, 237. 

Cassius Dio, v. Bio. 

Cassivellaunus, v. Cadvallon. 

Catiline, 61, 64, 73. 

Cato, 71 ; opposes C. and Metellus, 73 ; 
opposed to extraordinary powers, 
ib. ; contributes to election fund, 
80; against C.'s Agrarian law, 84; 
placed under arrest by C, 85; sent 
to Cyprus, 100; penetrates C.'s de- 
signs, ib. ; to deprive C. of his 
armies, 110; to surrender C. to Ger- 
mans, 123 ; why he dispensed with a 
province, 149 ; supports naval power 
for P., 153; defies P. in a trial, 169; 
defeated for consulate, 171; guar- 
dian of the old constitution, ib.; 



willing to compromise with C, 195; 
destroys himself at Utica, 229 ; Sal- 
lust on Cato, 230 ; Cicero's literary 
memorial, 231 sq., 251, 285. 

Catullus, 123, 249. 

Censors, 22, 53. 

Census lists, 22. 

Centurions, 271. 

Cicero, M. Tullius, 3, 4, 12, 14, 15, 17, 
21, 25, 40 ; on Apollonius, ib., 48, 51 ; 
Verres, 52, 57 ; — Greekling, 44 ; sup- 

. ports P.'s eastern command, 59 sq. ; 
on plot of Autronius, 61 ; consular 
candidate, 64; oratio in toga Can- 
dida, 65; defends old Rabirius, 67; 
his estimate of C.'s motion in Cati- 
linarian debate, 74, 75; on ^' leech 
of the treasury,'' 75 ; on acquittal of 
Clodius, 75, 81; on C.'s Agrarian 
law, 82 sg. ; his depression, 83 ; calls 
his Agrarian law " bribery," 84, 85; 
declines legateship, 86; on Gallic 
situation, 89, 91; returns from ex- 
ile, 106 ; supports C. in senate, 107 ; 
Campanian land, 108, 109; ill at 
easeas supporter of C, 111; 'dePro- 
vinciis Consularibus ,' 112; scholar 
in politics, ib., 126; belated interest 
in C.'s northwest campaigns, 131; 
correspondence with C.'s headquar- 
ters, 132; pessimistic view of actual 
government, 133, 134; nothing of 
Quintus's dire peril, 147; on Cras- 
sus, 148; executing commissions of 
the dynasts, ib. ; how he dates the 
beginning of his own proconsulate, 
153; self-repression, 149; meets C. 
at Ravenna, 154 ; had no clear con- 
ception of importance of Gallic 
campaigns, 168; antagonizes C. and 
P., 169; censured Cato for declining 
electoral bribery, 172; as proconsul 
of Cilicia, 179; hears from Cselius 
about breach between the dynasts, 
179 sq.; on oratory of Curio, 183; 
returns from Cilicia on eve of Civil 
War, 189; clear vision, 191; not 
sure whether C. will be cruel or 
not, 197 ; angry at P., 198 ; on events 
of 49 B.C., 203 sq. ; on Pharsalos, 
210 sq.; gloomy ten months at 



INDEX 



325 



Brundisium, 218 sqq. ; on Cleopatra, 
221; returns to his own, 223; furi- 
ous hatred of C, 224 ; anxious about 
African campaign, 226; cowed by 
C.'s success, 230; on C. as owner of 
provinces, 231 ; Lmis Catonis, 231 
sq. ; on C.'s omnipotence, 232 ; igno- 
rant as to where C. would name 
candidates, 238; view of Spanish 
campaign, 239; intercedes for ex- 
iles, 243; gloom after Munda, ib. ; 
refers to C. as rex, 245; his treach- 
erous nephew, ib. ; C.'s Anticato, 
ib. ; covert malediction of the auto- 
crat, 247; on C.'s sovereign whims, 
249; entertains C, ib. ; opposes 
Brutus's usurious practices in Cy- 
prus, 252 ; Cicero ' easy ' in C.'s esti- 
mation, 254; on diadem incident, 
256 ; on Antony's demeanor on Ides 
of March, 259 ; on the assassination, 
261 ; on C.'s oratory, 264 ; his ' Bru- 
tus,^ 266; on Lex lulia Repetunda- 
rum, 267; Laus Catonis, 277; on 
African War, 283; Cicero's writings 
as sources, 289 sqq. ; churlishness 
in judgment on C, 291. 

Cicero, Quintus, 64, 128, 131, 132, 135, 
145, 149, 279. 

Cicero, Quintus, the younger, 245. 

Cimber, Tillius, 260, 

Cinna, 7, 23, 24, 26, 27, 28. 

Civil War, genetic point, 80. 

Cleopatra, 212 sq., 221, 236, 246, 293, 
313. 

Collegium Poetarum, 5. 

Comitia, 23, 181, v. Botsford. 

Commentarii, date of, 105 ; arrange- 
ment of matter of, 108 (bulletins 
from the seat of war, 112) ; cp. Suet., 
56 ; self-defence : probably a reply 
to Cato, 121 ; why is the incident of 
the Pirustx included? 127; loose 
geographical notions, 128 ; later than 
Cicero's letters of 54 B.C., 131; 
dwell on prowess of soldiers, espe- 
cially of centurions, 136; ' Ephe- 
merides,' 138; appreciative tone to- 
wards P., 139; sketch of Gauls and 
Germans, 141 ; attempt to besmirch 
Vercingetorix, 156; date of compo- 



sition, ib.; courteous reference to 
P., ib. ; faculty of putting adversa- 
ries in the wrong, 161 ; obvious has- 
tening to conclusion with fall of 
Alesia, 166, 205 sqq. ; probable date 
of, 268; why not Llbri^ called 
Ephemerides, 269 ; omitting data of 
provincial administration, 270; Hir- 
tius on Commentarii, 270; regard 
for soldiers, 271; Cicero on, 272; c. 
de Bello Civili, 274 sqq. ; PoUio on, 
295. — Add data on p. 73. 

Corduba, 201, 220, 237, 240. 

Corfinium, 2. 

Cornelia, 6. 

Cossutia, 6. 

Crassus, the orator, 17. 

Crassiis, M. Licinius, the capitalist, 
28 ; slave war, 46 ; in plot of Autro- 
nius, 61 ; further association with 
C, 65; helps C, 77; second consu- 
late, 119; perishes, 127, 147, 148. 

Crassus, P., young, 113, 115, 116. 

Gremutius Cordus, 295, 297. 

Critognatus, 268. 

Cromioell, 222. 

Crucifixion at end of slave war, 49. 

Cryptogram of C, 138. 

Culinary joys, 43. 

Curio the Younger, 183, 186 sqq., 188, 
190, 202. 

Curius, informer, 73. 

Cyprus, 252. 

D 

Deiotarus, 216. 

Dio (Cassius Dio Cocceianus), 5; on 
intercession for young C, 33; anec- 
dotes, 55, 58 ; available from 66 B.C. 
on, 59; superiority to Appian and 
Plutarch, ib. ; not friendly to Cic- 
ero, 60 ; seems to have used Sueto- 
nius, too, 62 ; on Catilinarian debate, 
71, 72; on P.'s return from East, 76; 
points out pretext, 77; on triumvi- 
rate, 82, 88 ; closer to text of C. than 
Livy, 98; imitates Thucydides, 98; 
on Nervii, 105; relation of C.'s 
third commentarius, 47 sq.; haste, 
118; condemns C, 123; does not be- 
lieve C. quite fully, 126 ; discriminat- 



326 



INDEX 



ing on C.'s invasion of Britain, 132 ; 
blunders, 133 ; dramatizes and prag- 
matizes, 138; C.'s cryptogram, 138; 
manner of relation, 147 ; not exact, 
ib.; censures C, ib., 150, 152; on 
Vercingetorix campaign, 167 ; some 
detail not in C, ib., 170, 171, 208, 
214, 217, 224, 225, 230, 234, 236, 237, 
239, 241, 242 (close agreement witb 
Livy), 244, 247, 255, 256, 258, 259, 
306 sqq. 

Diodorus, 17. 

Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 2. 

Divitiacus, 89, 95, 142. 

Dolahella, 22\. 

Doniitius Ahenobarbus, 91, 110, 127, 
133, 181, 197, 201. 

Druids, 142 sq. 

Drumann, 52, 54, 141, 251, 296. 

Dumnorix, 92, 95, 128. 

Dyrrachium, 207. 



Eburones, 135, 146. 
Education, 4, v. Greek Culture. 
Egyptian job, 109. 
Electoral corruption, 150. 
Ellis, Robinson, 298. 
Emendation of texts, 16, 73, 

194. 
Ennius, 143. 
Ephemerides, 269. 
Epicurus, 260. 
Eratosthenes, 141. 
Esquiline quarter, 23. 



Fabius, legate, 175. 

Fenestella, 48. 

Ferrero, 311. 

Festus, 143. 

Feudal character of Keltic institu- 
tions, 92, 142 sqq. 

Fischer, 54. 

Florus, 26, 241, 257, 259, 298. 

Froude, 71, 116, 193; special critique 
of, 314 sqq. 

Fufius Calenus, 5. 

Fulvius Flaccus, 16. 

Fundum fieri, 21. 



G 

Gabinius, servitor of P., 58, 99, 148, 

213. 
Gades, 55, 201. 
Galba, 107. 
Gardthausen, 296. 
Gauls, their institutions, 142 sq. ; rank 

of states, 165 ; v. Keltic. 
Gellius, 21, 36, 39, 263. 
Genabum, vendetta at, 155. 
Geneva, 93. 
Gergovia, 160. 
Germanic superstition, 99 ; superiority 

to Kelts, 144 ; institutions, ib. 
Gnipho, Antonius, 5. 
Goeler, 92. 
Goethe, 309. 
Gorgobina, 157. 
Gracchian jurors, 12. 
Gracchus, Tib. Sempronius, 9; Gains, 

10, 12, 13, 15. 
Greek culture, in Roman education, 

4, 13, 39, 195, 212, 229. 
Greek script among Gauls, 96, 142. 
Greeks in Persian Wars, 165. 

H 

Hadrumetum, 255. 

Hegel, 106, 219, 309, 313. 

Ileitland, 299. 

Hesiod, 82. 

Hirrus, tr. pi. of P., 133. 

Hlrschfeld, 0., 279. 

Hirtius, A., 172, 174, 185, 221, 244, 

270, 277, 279 sq. 
Historians, Anticsesarian, 34. 
Historicorum Grsecorum Fragmenta, 

257. 
Holder, 101, 143. 
Holmes, T. Bice, 89, 92, 116, 128, 129, 

143, 161, 164, 175, 266, 267, 268. 
Horace, 293, 297. 
Hortensius, 263. 
Hosius, 299. 
Humanists, 4. 



Jahn, Otto, 296. 
Iberians, 116. 
Jerome, 22. 



INDEX 



327 



Ihm, 143. 

Jordan, J?., 291. 

* Italica ' (Corfinium) , 19. 

Ityrsei, 64. 

Juba, 202, 225. 

Index Qusestionis, 65. 

Jngurtha, 12. 

Julia (aunt of C), 3, 15, 25. 

Julia (daughter of C), 85, 133. 

lulia Lex Repetundarum, 86 sq., 105, 

115, 148, 267. 
lulii, 2 sqq., 15. 
Julius Caesar Strabo, 25. 
Julius CsBsar, cons. 90 B.C., 19. 
Juhj, 3, 248. 
Jury system, 52, 74. 

K 

KeiVs ' Grammatici,' 265. 

Kelsey, Fr. W., 266. 

Keltic ingenium, 131, cf. 14^2 sq., 158; 
inferiority to Germans, 144 ; enthu- 
siasm of self-sacrifice, 159; mighty 
movement, 163 ; national diet, ib. ; 
desperation, 166. 

Kelts, in Thapsus campaign, 284. 

Kiepert, 216. 

Kornemann, 296. 

Kratippos, 1. 

Kiibler, 'Fragmenta Caesaris,' 84, 86, 
267, 277. 



Laberius, 248. 

Labienus, 115, 128, 129, 131, 137, 140, 
145, 160, 162, 163, 174, 185, 196, 210, 
243, 284. 

Landgraf, 283. 

Landlords, 10. 

Lange, Ludioig, 17, 21, 83, 110, 148, 
170, 191, 235, 247, 248, 263, 309. 

Latifundia, 8. 

Legati, of C, 271, 283. 

Lentulus, cons, of 49 B.C., 188, 191, 
204. 

Lepidus, 245, 257, 259, 260. 

Lex, Villia Annalis, 13, 202; Thoria, 
14 ; Licinia Mucia, 16 ; Leges Livise, 
18; Lex lulia (on allies), 21; Plau- 
tia et Papiria, 21, 24; Scantinia de 
Nefanda Venere, 35; Aurelia, re- 



forms jury system, 52; lulia Agra- 
ria, 83; lulia Repetundarum, 86 s?., 
105, 115, 148, 267; Trebonia, 148: 
Pompeia de vi and de ambitu, 156 ; 
Pompeia de Provinciis, 170; Pedia 
de Interfectoribus Caesaris, 294. 

Licinius, 257. 

Lilybaeum, 225. 

Litterse public8B, 271. 

Livius, M. L. Drusus, tr pi., 91 B.C., 
14; aims at a greater Rome, 18; 
assassinated, ib., 38. 

Livy, 18, 19, 20, 22, 25, 35, 36, 48, 53; 
on moral decline, 35, 74; partisan 
attitude, 80, 85 ; on Nervii, 105 sqq.; 
on Britain, 132, 133; cited, 152, 167, 
187, 212 ; account of Munda, 241 sq. ; 
cited, 120, 255, 257, 258, 296 sqq. 

Long, George, 21. 

Luca, conference at, 110. 

Lucan, 208, 214, 299. 

Lucceius, 79. 

Lucullus, L., 45. 

Lupercalia, 256 sq. 

Lutatius Catulus, leader of senate, 63. 

Lutetia Parisiorum, 140. 

M 

Macrobius, 249. 

Madvig, 53, 65, 179, 314. 

Maynurra, 123, 249, 277. 

Manilius, servitor of Pompey, 59. 

Marcellus, Gains Claudius, consul 
50 B.C., 180, 188. 

Marcellus, Gains Claudius (cousin of 
preceding, brother of Marcus Mar- 
cellus), cons. 49 B.C., 188. 

Marcellus, M. Claudius, cons. 51 B.C., 
170, 178, 179, 232, 268. 

Marcius, L. M. Philippus, cons. 
91 B.C., 14, 17, 22. 

Marcius Rex, 15. 

Marius, Gains, 3, 7, 12, 14, 15, 18, 19, 
23, 24; filled with social hatred, 25; 
death, 26 ; ashes scattered in Anio, 
32; name rehabilitated by C, 62. 

Marius, Jr., 29, 30. 

Marquardt, 6. 

Massilia, 201. 

Matins, 134, 217. 

Memmius, 15. 



328 



INDEX 



Menander, 5, 194 sq. 

Menapii, 117. 

Mendelssohn, 303. 

Metellus Numidicus, 15. 

Metellus Pius, 24, 28. 

Mithridates, 26. 

Mithridates of Pergamos, 214. 

Mithridatic War, 22. 

Mommsen, 2, 13, 17, 19, 65, 76, 97, 106, 

116, 122, 218 sq., 222, 292, 297 ; special 

critique of M., 309 sqq. 
Morini, 117, 124. 
Munda, 241 sq., 287. 
Munro, 249, 271 (on Catullus, 29). 
Mutilus, 19. 

N 
Naples and Heraclea, 21. 
Napoleon, 310 sq. 
Napoleon III, 92. 
Narbo, 156. 
Nervii, 103, 139. 

Nikolaos of Damascus, 257, 259, 293. 
Nikornedes of Bithyyiia, 34, 35. 
Nipperdey, 263, 280, 281. 
Notarii, 270. 
Noviodunum, 102. 
Nutting, H. C, 60. 



OftzfZco, 237. 

Octavius (cons. 87 B.C.), 24. 

Octavius, Young, 2^9; y. Augustus. 

Octodurus, 107. 

Opimius, 12. 

Oppius (book on C. by him), 32, 38, 
41, 44 (anecdotes, 56), 78, 172, 233, 
238, 243, 245, 270, 271, 283, 285. 

Orgetoriz, 92. 



Paganism, sexual corruption in, 35. 

Pansa, 181. 

Parilia, 243. 

Pausanias, 129. 

Pedia, Lex, 294. 

Pelusium, 212. 

Perperna, 45. 

Perrin, Bernadotte, 299. 

Peter, Hermann, 11, 296. 

Petreius, 200 sgg. 



Pharnaces, 215 sgg'. 

Pharsalos, 208 sgg. 

Philhellenism, 4, 

Pirates, ^ sq., 57 sq. 

Plato, 229. 

Plebs, leech of the treasury, 171 ; cor- 
rupt at elections, ib. ; defeats Cato, 
ib. 

PZiwy ^/le i7cZer, 5, 8, 35, 86, 271. 

Pliny the Younger, 263. 

Pompeius (Strabo), father of P., 20, 
56. 

Pollio, Asinius, 80, 194, 195, 221, 241, 
242, 283, 294 sqq., 305. 

Plutarch of Ch£eronea, cites Poseido- 
nios, 26; differs from Appian, 28; 
condemns Sulla, ib. ; influenced by 
Sulla's memoirs, 28; censures Sulla, 
30; probably uses Oppius, 32; con- 
fused, 33; literal version of a Latin 
idiom, 37; on prosecution by C. of 
Antonius, 39; confused as to C.'s 
adventure with pirates, 41; cited, 
42, 44, 45 ; hurried transcription, 49 ; 
cited, 50, 51, 54; on Catilinarian de- 
bate, 70; cited, 71, 73, 74; remarka- 
ble fulness in Bo7ia Dea scandal, 77, 
78; on triumvirate, 81; error, ib. ; 
bitter toward C, 85, 87; cited, 100; 
on Belgian campaigns, 106; bitter 
against C, ib. ; on conference of 
Luca, 110; 111: contemptuous tone 
toward C, 118; on butchery of 
Usipetes and Tencteri, 123; hurry 
in transcription, ib. ; translation of 
Latin, ib. ; on first British expedi- 
tion, 125; calls invasion a failure, 
132; blunder, 133; odd tense, ib.; 
seems to have used Commentarii, 
138; brief on events of, 53 B.C., 116; 
cited, 117, 152; on Vercingetorix, 
167; cited, 171, 172, 180, 187; on 
Rubicon matter, impressive resem- 
blance to Appian, 195; cited, 202, 
207, 208, 212, 215, 223, 226, 228, 230, 
234, 236, 241, 242, 255, 257, 259, 263, 
269; after Oppius, 270; refers to 
C.'s Anticato, 211, 301 sqq. 

Pompey, Cn. P. Magnus, supports 
Sulla, 29 ; sent to Sicily and Africa, 
30; mandatary in Spain of an un- 



INDEX 



329 



willing senate, 45; no politician at 
all, 49; enormous power of P. in 
70 B.C.; consul with Crassus, 50; 
his dignitas, 51 ; restores power of 
tribunes, 51; war with corsairs, 
57 sq. ; vast imperium, ib. ; moves 
southward, 63; romantic strain, 64; 
divorces Mucia, 74; returns to 
Kome, 75; his civic continence 
praised by Dio, 76; supports C.'s 
agrarian law, 85; marries Julia, ib. ; 
ratification of acts of Eastern com- 
mand, 86; consciousness of his dig- 
nitas, ib. ; Ptolemy Auletes, 87 ; 
balance of power, 106; new power 
for P., ib. ; indirect mode of inti- 
mating his will, 109; pestered by 
Clodius, ib.; second consulate, 119; 
Luca settlements executed, ib. ; does 
not go to Spain, 126; taciturn, 148; 
supine amid the political disintegra- 
tion in the capital, 149; 'consul 
without a colleague,' 152; saviour 
of law and order, ib. ; declines C.'s 
proposals for new marriage pact, 
152; his laws de vi and de ambitii, 
156 ; favors Bursa, 169 ; for reform of 
provincial government, 170; leader 
of Optimates, 177; declaration 
against C. forced from P., 179 sq.; 
alone weighs more than senate, 180 ; 
action of Sept. 29, 51 e.g., 181 ; re- 
served manner, ib.; self-deception, 
182 ; sealed oracle, ib. ; Curio against 
him, 187; errs as to temper of 
troops, 188; false notions of C.'s 
legions, 192; P. on C.'s motives for 
Civil War, 194; P. confused, ib. ; 
leaves Rome, 196; helpless, 197; 
sails from Italy, 198; Eastern re- 
sources, 205; refuses parley, 206; 
taunts of his own partisans, 207 ; al- 
ternative of strategy, 208; flight, 
21155-.; death, 212. 

Pompey, Cn., the Younger, 237 sqq., 
240. 

Pompey, Seztius, 238. 

Pompeians, 219, 220, 227. 

Pompey' s stone theatre, 259. 

Populates, 15. 

Porcia, 252. 



Poseidonios, 26. 

Potheinos, 215. 

PrsBueste, 30; Fasti Praenestini, 214. 

Prastor urbanus, 20. 

Proletarian, 14. 

Proscription, 31. 

Provincial government, when it begins 
to run, 153. 

Ptolemy Auletes, job of his restora- 
tion, 109, 148, 212 sq. 

Ptolemy, of Cyprus, 251. 

Ptolemy, schoolboy king, 212. 



Quintilian, 39, 294, 296. 

R 

Rabirius, 12, 67. 

Ranke, 1, Preface vii. 

Remi, 101. 

Rheinbimd, 102. 

Rhetoricians'' schools, 4. 

Rhine, C.'s first crossing, 123; second 

crossing, 141. 
Rhodes, 253. 

Rome, no genuine democracy, 8. 
Ruteni, 156. 
Rutilius Rufus, 17. 

S 

Saga sumere, 19. 

Sallust, 13, 15 ; ' HistoriaB ' began with 
death of Sulla, 36 ; governor of Nu- 
midia, 230, 291 sq.', fair as between 
C. and Cato, 292. 

Sanders, Henry A., 297. 

Sa)idi/s, J. E., 273. 

Scapula, 287. 

Schanz, 296. 

Schmidt, 0. E., 293, 296. 

Schneider, on date of composition of 
commentarii, 266. 

Schwartz, 303, 306 (student of Appiau 
and Dio) . 

Scipio ^milianus, 11. 

Scipio, Metellus, father-in-law of P., 
181, 191, 225, 285. 

Sempronius Asellio, 20. 

Senatus Consultum Ultimum, 12, 192. 

Seneca, sharp censure of C.'s demo- 
cratic pretensions, 199. 



330 



INDEX 



Senones, 140. 

Sequayii, 89. 

Sertorms, 45. 

Servilia, 70, 251. 

Servilius (Isauricus), 36. 

Servius, 269. 

Sicoris, river, 200. 

Sihler, E. G., 'Collegium Poetarum,' 
5; ' Testimonium Animae,' 8; emen- 
dation of texts, 16, 73, 89, 194 ; aim 
of this work, 177 ; on Rubicon mat- 
ter, 195 ; exegesis of enigmatic pas- 
sage in Suetonius, 229 ; on commen- 
tarii, 266, 298, 313. 

Sophocles, 212. 

Spanish campaign, Last, 237 sqq. 

Spartacus and Crixus, 46. 

Spurinna, 258, 

Steinthal, 273. 

Straho, 116, 143, 237, 295. 

Suehi, 97, 119-120, 140. 

Suessiones, 102. 

Suet07iius, 2, 4, 5, 6, 15, 32, 38, 39, 41, 
44; anecdotes reviewed, 55 sq., 56, 
57; critical, 61, 71, 72, 73, 79; on 
triumvirate, 81, 83, 87, 91, 94, 111, 
112, 323, 132, 152; antiquarian pre- 
cision, 154, 157, 177, 194, 205, 208, 
215, 217, 225, 229, 234, 241, 246, 247, 
255, 257, 259, 263, 268, 273, 278, 300 sq. 

Sugaynbri, 124, 146. 

Suidas, 293. 

Sulla (dictator), 6, 7, 18, 20, 22, 23, 
27, 28, 29, 31, 34, 36, 37, 290, 298. 

Sulla, P., 222. 

Sulpicius, tr. pi. of 88 B.C., 23. 

Sulpicius, Servius S. Ru/us (cons. 
51 B.C.), 170; warns against civil 
war, 179, 203. 

Symmachus, 269. 



Tacitus, 294, 295, 297. 
Tanusius Geminus, anticsesarian his- 
torian, 34, 123, 177, 228, 268. 
Terentia, 219. 

• Testimonium Animse,' 313. 
Teufel, W., 251. 

Texts, emendation of, 16, 73, 89, 194. 
Thames, 129. 
Thapsus, 227 sq., 283 sqq. 



Thorius, 14. 

Thouret, 296. 

Titurius Sabinus, 116, 135. 

Topographical verification, 128; v. 
Holmes. 

Trebatius Testa, 132, 134, 270. 

Trebonius, 145, 174, 253, 259, 262. 

Treveri, 134, 138, 139, 140, 174. 

Tribunus Plebis, 12, 44, 51. 

TptKapavos, 81. 

Triumphs, 234 sq. 

Triumvirate, ancient tradition con- 
cerning, 80 sq.; not omnipotent, 
108,127; Luca, 110. 

Trojan Families, 2. 

Tutela, 6. 

Tyrrell, editor of Cicero's letters, 82, 
89, 126, 177, 182, 283. 



U 



Utica, 228. 
Uxellodunum, 175. 



Valerius Maximus, 253, 298. 
Varro, 2, 58, 81, 201, 230, 273, 276. 
Velleius Paterculus, 6, 11, 30, 32, 41, 

234, 257, 294, 298. 
Veneti, 114 sqq. 
Veni, Vidi, Vici, 217. 
Venus Genetrix, 2, 15, 255. 
Vercingetorix, 155, 156, 157, 158, 163, 

164, 268. 
Vergil, 2, 297. 
Vergobret, 95, 160, 161. 
Verrius Flaccus, 3, 273. 
Vestals, 245. 

Vettlus, informer, 73; of. Curius. 
Volkmann, 301. 

W 
Wachsmuth, 303. 
Westermann, 263. 
White, Horace, translator of Appian, 

303. 
Wissotoa, 74, 143. 
World^pirit, 219, 309, 311, 313; cf. 

Hegel and Mommsen. 
Writings of C, 263 sqq. 



Zela, 206 sq. 
Zonaras, 50. 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

TESTIMONIUM ANIMiE 

or, Greek and Roman before Jesus Christ, a Series of Essays dealing with the Spiritual 

Elements in Classical Civilization 

Price $2.2^ postpaid 

G. E. STECHERT & CO., 1908 
New York, London, Leipzig, Paris 
A book for classical, theological, and philosophical readers. Not least so for the former, 

whose hves are often spent in perpetual contact with youthful immaturity and In didactic itera- 
tion. Others still cloak themselves with the fancy of consummate humanity, and become very 
ungracious when the underlying paganism of the classical world is set into clear light. The 
spirit of this artificial elevation may be called bornee or naive ; it matters Httlc which form 
you prefer : the book laid its finger on a pathological point, and here and there evoked the 
particular spirit just noted. Thus a reviewer in the Nation of New York (March ii, 1909) 
uttered condesceiiding displeasure, while ' R. G. B.' of England, in the Classical Quarterly, 
gave vent to angry displeasure, whereas finally the noted Hellenist, Hermann Diels of 
'Q&rXmhXe.vf 3^\)\2iSt. oi furious displeasure (Deutsche Literaturzeitung), None of these 
three offered a scintilla of disproof. Now the ' Testimonium Animae,' traversing Greco-Roman 
literature from Homer and Hesiod to Seneca and beyond, proceeding inductively, without 
strabism or prejudice, noting merely what literature, history, and philosophy give up in 
domains which concern the soul interests of man (interests greater than aesthetical concerns 
surely), this book, we claim, fortified by chapter and verse in thousands of data, offers a 
splendid opportunity for disproof, for it bristles with judgments and points beyond hedgehog 
and porcupine. Why not demolish it rather than make faces at it ? 

As to readers or reviews we append but a few extracts of the latter : From the Princeton 
Theological Review. (April, 1910, p. 285.) 

" Whether approached from the standpoint of the classicist or from that of the historian of 
religion and morals, this work is equally stimulating, independent, virile. . . ." " There is no 
more striking proof that a book is written out of unusual depth of knowledge and by com- 
pulsion of inward necessity, than when it proves to be something other than what the writer 
first intended it to be. . . ." [Professor Sihler . . . has written in a letter : " I did not 
intffid to write the kind of book I have actually written. My purpose and design were 
largely positive ; if, after traversing the entire literary tradition, the negative and unsatis- 
factory and evil features are projected far more strongly upon the screen, I cannot help 
that. . . . "] " But where the comment comes, it is incisive and convincing, because it 
strikes the mind with the freshness and cogency of an induction. Especially is this negative 
character of the ' Testimonium Animae' evident in the author's strictures upon the neo-hellenism 
or neo-paganism of the Winckelmann-Goethe-Arnold-Symonds-Pater type. His indictment 
of this class of writers is not simply that they magnify aesthetics and degrade ethics . . . but 
the more startling charge, that the ' Greekdom ' which they extol is a fiction, an unreal 
abstraction, to which nothing in history ever corresponded." 

From Dr. Robinson Ellis, Corpus Professor of Latin in the University of Oxford. 
(Jan. 14, 1909.) "... your excellent and most lively and graphic book on Greek culture 
and morals." 

From Professor Georg Wissowa, of the University of Halle-Wittenberg. . . . (Dec. 
26,1908.) " Ihr schones und inhaltsreiches Buch Testimonium Animae. . . . Ich habe . . . 
vorlaeufig nur einen von den Essays Ihres Buches (XIV, Roman spirit and Roman character) 
lesen konnen, darin aber so grosse Anregung und so hohen Genuss gefunden, dass ich mich 
auf die weitere Lektiire des Buches sehr freue." 

From an American Classicist of New England. (Nov. 13, 1908.) " Pure hearts will 
reverence this monument, for it is spiritual learning pure and undefiled. And amid the eager 
rush of the throng for practical and material lessons, that they may in their turn increase the 
material conquests of man, it is truly delightful to turn aside with one who dwells apart, and 
think on other and higher things. And surely one must think who follows your guidance 
here. He cannot merely enjoy, as students insist altogether on doing now, as their masters 
tell them what they have had to acquire by conquest." 



From an American Classicist of the Middle West. (May 14, 1909.) "... This will 
perhaps serve to indicate to how wide a range of readers your book, with its condensed 
teaching on a limitless subject, will appeal." 

From Dr. M. W. Stryker, President of Hamilton College. (April 22, 1909.) " Men 
may flout its honesty, but cannot gainsay its recital of fact, backed by such coercive citation 
of fact and warranting the broad inferences. ... It leads to a revision of the standards of 
beauty and makes its identification with form significant. It shows how the so-called 
* Philistinism ' of Hebrew righteousness is needed to antidote that idolatry of the visible." 

From Dr. Augustus H. Strong of Rochester, N.Y., Author of "Philosophy and 
Religion," "Systematic Theology," etc. (May 4, 1909.) "I have had enough time to 
convince me that it is an invaluable repertory of information with regard to classic literature 
and its relation to Christianity. I do not know where so much learning on the subject can 
elsewhere be found in so small compass. I am astonished at the breadth of Dr. Sihler's 
reading, and the minuteness of his quotations with the references attached must give especial 
satisfaction to every scholar." 

From Horace White, Esq., LL.D., formerly Editor-in-Chief of the Evening Post, 
N.Y., and Translator of Appian. (March 25, 1909.) "I wish to say that I find the book 
captivating and absorbing in point of interest. I know of nothing which covers the same 
ground. I mean to read every line of it." 

From Bibliotheca Sacra. (April, 1909, pp. 375-376.) " If one doubts the justice of 
Paul's indictment of heathenism ... he will have his error corrected by persual of this 
remarkable volume, written by one of the most eminent classical scholars of our time. The 
volume is not the hasty production of a young student aspiring for the degree of Doctor of 
Philosophy, but the mature work of one who for well-nigh forty years has been delving in 
both the beauties and deformities of classical literature. ..." 

From the Spectator, London. (June 12, 1909.) " Professor Sihler's book is an exami- 
nation, and substantially an indictment, of classical civilization regarded in its moral and 
spiritual aspect. . . . We must be content with a general commendation of the book to our 
readers. The author has delivered his soul, and to good purpose. The fact is that there has 
been in quite recent times a revival of humanism in its worst aspect. . . . Hellenism has 
been exalted over Hebraism. The Greek ideal of human life has been pronounced to be 
the highest achievement of human effort. . . . They will not learn anything new from 
Professor Sihler, but it is possible that they may be affected by the way in which he 
emphasizes facts which they are disposed to ignore." 

From the Classical Weekly, N.Y. (May 15, 1909.) "Professor Sihler is well known 
for his exact and searching scholarship. In his * Testimonium Animae ' he gives evidence of 
these qualities on every page. . . . The book in brief is an investigation into the funda- 
mental principles underlying the life of Greece and Rome before the advent of Christianity. 
. . . The purifying power of ignorance has idealized almost all that is corrupt. ..." 

From the Berliner Philologische Wochenschrift. (Sept. 4, 1909, col. 1115-1125.) 
" Auf Grundlage vieler hundert ausgewahlter Ausspriiche ihrer ausgezeichneten Dichter und 
Schriftsteller in eigens von ihm gefertigten guten Uebersetzungen. . . . Sein Bestreben war 
die Alten weder herabzusetzen noch zu iiberschatzen, sondern nach ihrem wahren Werte zu 
beurteilen. Ihm schwebte dabei vor allem das Interesse der studierenden Jagend vor, wie 
auch die den meisten Kapiteln zum Schluss angefugten Anmerkungen zeigen. ... Im 
Gegensatz zu Welcker leugnet Sihler jede Einwirkung des griechischen Religionssystems auf 
die Sittlichkeit, wahrend er aesthetische Einwirkung zugiebt. . . . Die erhaltenen Tragodien 
des Sophokles charakterisiert er schon der Reihe nach. . . . Die dargebotene reiche Uber- 
schau und Musterung des Heidentums vom christlichen und heutigen i^sic) Standpunkt wird 
der Leser voll Dank fur Belehrung und viel Anregung aus der Hand legen. ..." 



The London address of the Publishers is. 
G. E. STECHERT & CO., 

STAE YARD, W.C. 

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